Things I forgot to write this year

As I was preparing to write this, my final column of 2008, I pulled out my notes from the year and realized there were a few things I had intended to write about, but simply forgot.

Actually, I didn’t totally forget, because I’m thinking of them now. Let’s just say I didn’t forget… I simply ran out of weeks. There are only 52 weeks in a year, and if I have more than 52 topics, I’m out of luck. (Probably even fewer, because I use about half of the weeks dribbling about some nonsense that just happened to cross my mind, or reminiscing about the way things were when I was a kid.)

Anyway, I thought – this being the Christmas season and all, as my special Christmas gift to you – I would quickly run through some of the points I intended to write about, but didn’t get around to.

-- Absent-mindedness is not such a bad thing, I have learned. True, you occasionally forget something important… but you also forget a LOT of stuff that you’re better off not remembering!

-- Don’t you hate it when you call customer service, and you get a recording telling you that you’ll be on “hold” for five minutes until the next representative is available? Know what I do? After they answer, I always make a point to put THEM on hold a few times… you know, maybe to go warm up my coffee, or just to stretch my legs which have gotten stiff from sitting there waiting for them to answer!!!

-- There are an awful lot of people originally from Up North who have moved to the Pimento State. I think my favorite transplants are the ones from places like Michigan and Ohio in the Mid-West. They seem to blend in rather nicely. But, you can’t really say that about the ones from New York and Massachusetts. Seems like they’re always trying to change things to “the way we did it Up North.” (They can complain about us all they want to, but you don’t hear about anybody retiring and moving North!)

-- At my house, I have three different kinds of exercise machines in various rooms. I have found that no matter what part of the house they’re in, they all make excellent clothes racks.

-- The older I become, the more I forget the names of people… but the less embarrassed I am about it. When acquaintances challenge me on forgetting their names, I have a great comeback:
“I’m old!”

-- I have recently learned that there’s nothing less romantic than flossing in bed.

-- Paying for TV and buying water. These are concepts which I scoffed at when I first heard them predicted many years ago. Now I freely fork over hard-earned cash for both. What has happened to me?

-- And speaking of TV, the conversion from analog to digital is now only weeks away. I haven’t given it much thought until recently. I’m not an engineer or computer expert, so I really don’t fully understand the technological reasons for the required changeover. However, a couple of questions have arisen in my mind, which I’m hopeful have already been raised and answered before Congress mandated the change-over.

Here’s the most concerning question: If all of our TV communications are now digital – and analog no longer exists – wouldn’t our entire nationwide communications network be at risk of being “hacked”? Couldn’t technology-savvy enemies of our nation easily disrupt, or even hijack, our broadcasts via the Internet, which they cannot do with analog signals? Probably not. Probably I’m just wondering out loud, and the great minds in Washington have figured that problem out a long time ago. Anyway, I hope so.

-- Did I ever tell you that I keep one contact lens in, and one out, so I can see far away or close up? Of course, near or far, everything’s a little fuzzy this way. So, if you see me on the street, and I seem not to recognize you… you’ll know why!!!

“I’m old!”

-- Technology is taking over my life. There was a time when – if I had a question – I would look it up in the encyclopedia or almanac. Nowadays, I usually just google it. I’m now officially a Facebook user. (For the un-enlightened, that’s a “social network” website on the Internet.) And I currently have over 500 emails waiting to be read. (Actually, most of them have already been glanced at, but I’m waiting on some “spare time” to go back and read them thoroughly.)

-- Do you realize that – when the clock strikes midnight on New Years Eve – we will officially be in the 10th year of the New Century and the New Millennium? Could it have been that long already? (I guess time flies when you’re fighting terrorism and heading into a global recession.)

I can tell it’s been a long time since we heralded in Y2K on January 1, 2000, because back then, I had learned how to spell “millennium”, and today, as I’m writing this column… I had to look it up!

On Dictionary.com, of course.

Suddenly, its coming back to me. I didn’t FORGET to write about these things… I skipped them on purpose! Oh well, too late now.

I am, however, currently forgetting to write my special 2008 Christmas Week Holiday Greetings column!

So let me just quickly leave you with a few of my original Christmas thoughts:

“Have a holly, jolly Christmas. May all your Christmases be bright. Santa Claus is coming to town. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. We wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Although it’s been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you. Jump in bed and cover your head ‘cause Santa Claus comes tonight. Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Feliz Navidad. Fa la la la la, la la la la!”


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You’re always welcome to let me know you agree, disagree, can’t make sense of, or simply don’t care about anything I’ve written here… or about any other topic that happens to be on your mind. You can email me directly at: RodShealy@aol.com.

And, if reading it once just wasn’t enough for you, read it again online – along with previous columns -- at my modern-technology Electronic Internet blog: www.doingthefirst.blogspot.com (And, if you’d like to look at me while you’re reading… you can look me up on Facebook!)