The Prairie Spy

Alan “Linda” Linda

On the list of things I’m happy about this New Year are several things. You can call them blessings, but perhaps you should read this all the way through before deciding what to call them. They are, as they say, what they are.

First on the list is: I’m so very grateful that I’m not an adult child (of mine) faced with deciding when to take their parent’s (me, my) driver’s license away. (This is a classic example of a reverse blessing.)

It’s hard work for my adult children to handle their own kids—my grandkids—on top of handling their parent—that’d be me again—on top of managing careers and other stuff. That “other stuff” is something I am grateful about not having on my lists any more. That ship sailed, as they say, after I retired. There is no “other stuff.” The bottom line here is that I’m glad I’m not them.

Because I’m not going to make it easy on them, these adult children of mine.

Sure enough, I did make it a bit easier when I decided that my troublesome back cannot possibly support the weight of a hang glider, thus I’m not going to North Carolina and signing up for a hang gliding class. But let me be clear—I really want to. I’m not closing that door completely, but it is 99 percent shut.

So I guess I’m happy that I’m not one of my adult children who finds out that their father is booking airplane tickets to learn how to hang glide. That’s a good thing to take into the New Year, even though I’m a bit sad about it. One person’s New Year’s Motto is another’s New Year’s “that-ship-has-sailed” motto.

I’m also glad that my adult children now know that I just took a safe driving course. And better yet, passed it. (Okay, the bar was pretty low.) Since I took that safe driving course, I have new leverage to use when-not-if I start running into things with my car. It’ll be a good excuse, and give me some legitimacy when I insist that it was the other driver’s fault. And absolutely not, I will insist, did not having my eyes checked since the last century have a darned thing to do with it. 

I consider it somewhat of a blessing that physicists have just confirmed the very real possibility of other dimensions, which co-exist alongside our own. This is a blessing because as I dodder my way down the highway in my car, getting lost and running into things, I may well be the very first litigant to use the “parallel branes (dimensions) defense. “It wasn’t me,” I will plead, “it was the other me.”

There may yet be more bad news for my adult children. And in turn, that bad news makes me gladder and gladder that I’m not them, so, as you can see, that makes the New Year much better for me. It’s confirmed: blessings come in strange packages.

The other bad news? Because since I cannot lift a nonpowered hang glider, that just means maybe I should buy some kind of wings that have a motor. Like some kind of ultralight. You know the kind–they look like flying clothes lines, the way they’re held together with wires and clamps and stuff. Were I to invest in one of them, wow, then I’d really be happy I’m not the adult child of me. 

So, all this year, I’m going to make my children unhappy that I’m happy. 

A great New Year’s motto.