I wrote this on New Year's Day morning
on a legal pad—I'm just getting around to retyping it.
It's been since October, 2011 since
I've attempted to do a normal job. I just cannot work with the
consistency that work in our society demand. Since then, the flea
marketing that I have done for most of my adult life has evolved into
my son's second job of selling via eBay, craigslist, and
occassionally doing flea markets, with most of those being one's
where a church (interestingly enough, in my area, usually sponsored
by “liberal/progressive” churches affiliated with centuries old
denominations). My son deals with the complexities of eBay selling
smaller, higher priced items, and I dealing with large and
inexpensive items, and getting purchases packaged and delivered to
the various shipping companies. Even then, in my area, there are no
worthwhile flea markets when it's really cold outside, and I can no
longer consistently handle doing flea markets when it is really hot
in the summer.
To that effect, life is somewhat more
out of my control than at any time since I was a child. I depend on
my son. From that, Christmas, oddly, was quite pleasant this year.
For most years, I had an inward guilt about not being able to make it
a sufficiently nice Christmas, or worse, having overspent enough to
make the next few months a little bit more miserable. Now, that type
of thing is just totally out of my control.
Last evening, somehow, I wound up
watching a tv program on aging on one of the community access
channels in my area. I didn't catch the name of the program in the
beginning, but the content drew me into it, and, at the end, the
credits told that it was produced by the University of Hawai'i at
Manoa Center on Aging. Come to think of it, I don't remember them
having the apostrophe between the two “i”'s as U. Of Hawai'i
insists on being the correct spelling, but that's irrelevant. It some
ways, it was kind of discouraging, seeing people in their 80's talk
about taking walks and traveling, and having younger relatives
question whether it was a good idea at their age. I say that as,
while at this time I am “only” 60, walking and traveling are too
painful to wish to do, except as necessary.
One off the wall statement in the
program was that, in speaking to many older persons, when asked what
they were proudest of in their life, there was a significant division
by race. Whites indicated that they reached a point where they could
travel or do what they wanted; blacks were proudest that they had
survived. Now, it needs to be noted that what today would be an
elderly black person lived a portion of their life when society in
this country was overtly racist in many areas. I also realize that
many blacks perceive society, even today, to be more antagonistic
than I as a white person perceive it. To me, it wasn't clear whether
this program and the interviews behind it were done nationally or in
Hawai'i, where the subject of race is quite different than in the
contiguous 48.
The program touched on belief in the
sense that two of the people being interviewed were a non-orthodox
Jewish rabbi and a Catholic monsignor. Additionally, a woman who was
Jewish made a comment about, when she was a girl, she asked a
question about Judaism to an older person and was told females didn't
have to concern themselves with those things.
Further, the program asserted that
older persons do not become more conservative politically with age.
That should make me feel better, as I have moved from conservative to
so radical no successful politician would want to talk to me, but,
being a tv program, all it has time to do is assert, and give a short
glimpse of the facts, which, of course, may be distorted. Of course,
I live in Virginia Beach, whose history is highly affected by a woman
who started as mayor as a liberal and left office decades later as so
conservative some of the monied people were in a rush to have her out
of office.
On Christmas, there was present
opening first thing in the morning. Grandson is almost 8—an age
where he can understand, anticipate, and get overly excited, but
still control himself somewhat when told to. Later in the day, I
watched some back-to-back episodes of a program on HGTV called,
“Hawaii Life”--they didn't use the apostrophe. It really isn't
what one might think the program is about.
The name of the program came from the
name of a real estate agency, and the program was their agents
showing persons looking to move there some houses—actually three in
a half hour. Wow—did whoever owns the agency pay to have this
program done, or do they get paid to do it? What advertising! I bet
I can guess the reaction of their local competitors who have more
normal real estate agency names.
As I said before, life has moved so
that I help my son with a merchandising business. It has gone from
flea market items to more of coins, jewelry, and vintage/antiques. I
am writing this while sitting in the town hall of a small town about
1 1/2 hours from where I live. There is this auctioneer that has an
auction in this town hall on New Year's Day and the 4th of
July. I am guessing that this room seats about 125, given that about
one fourth of the floor space is filled with tables of old stuff, as
is the stage, except for where the auctioneer and the secretary are
sitting. I am here at 9 in the morning. Auction will start at 10.
It's going to be a long day, I'm sitting in a chair, my son is
looking at items with a white glove, jeweler's loupe, and some little
electronic thing that differentiates real jewels from glass. Last
time he was here, he got some antique furniture. We've sold some,
but still have quite a bit. I talked him out of bring a car hauling
trailer with us, but we did come with a pickup instead of a car. I
hope everything he gets is (physically) small. He's 31, and about
the youngest person in the place acting like a buyer during the
inspection time.
On the wall, one of the items is a round outdoor thermometer, which,
in the middle, has the logo of Dr. Pepper, with the words underneath
it, “Hot or Cold”. To me hot Dr. Pepper sounds disgusting, as I
sip on a cold cola on a cold day.
If anyone is curious about what we are
selling, my son's eBay store can be searched under the code name,
“navygamer”. The items on norfolk.craigslist can be searched
with “757-735-3639”. My son also has an online store
“shop.savvythrify.com”.
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