On to That Final 20%.

I see we are not calling them Senior Centers anymore. Some are retitled "Center for Balanced Living."I don't know what that means? What is it? A retirement community for Wallendas? Some state is renaming every one "Active Adult Center". That sounds too much like a gym to me. If I walk in the door will somebody yell, "Give me ten!"What if I don't feel like being all that active?

Why can't we ever call anything what it is? I guess people can't face the truth. I'd be happy with Senescent Center, where the Geezers and Biddies play to they drop...dead.

Frankly I'm fine with being a senior citizen. By gum (old geezer slang word), I earned it. I will not be robbed of my right to be old. And don't give me that mishmash of 70 is the new 60 or 50 or perhaps they're calling it the new 20 by now. Seventy might be on the cusp, but 72 old, man.

They have this thing called life expectancy and it says for us dudes it is 76-77 years. That puts me four or five years away, so if I ain't old now I never will be. This life expectancy thing is a bit suspect to me. Some agency puts out list by countries and the United States ranks 51 on those lists. I think its just political. Got to watch anything put out there may be some manipulation for political reasons. Like they are back on this Global Warming kick again at the United nations, even though there hasn't been any increased warming for 17 years. they dismiss this as a "pause". If it's been seventeen years, i call it a trend.

But never mind, we're talking about life expectancy and those world types say 76-77 for us fellows. Yet, if I go to the Social Security Agency I am told I can expect to live another 13 years, which would make me 85. Furthermore, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) says I got 19 more years to go, which gets me to 91.

No matter how you cut it or who you believe, 72 makes me an old man, maybe on the young side of old age, but old nonetheless.  One way I figure is this. That 91 sounds like a reasonable number to me. Most my family lived up close to that. My mother died at 92 and my father at 94, so I got pretty good genes in the aging game. So if we round off at 90 and divide by 5 we get a pretty good breakdown of a life's divisions: childhood, young adult, career years, middle age into retirement and old age.

I worked until I was 70 and then full retirement kind of happened. That was a couple years ago so I'm now in stage 5, - old age.  I have arrived in my 73rd year and essentially the last 20% of my life.

(By the way, remember, when you celebrate your 72nd birthday it means you have finished up 72 years. The day after you birthday you are working through your 73rd years.)

This is not a complaint about being old. If there is any complaint it is about those who deny it, won't accept it, lie about it, flee from it or fear it. Get over it. Everybody gets old unless they die young, so celebrate and embrace it, you have survived.

I will tell you I don't feel much different in my brain. My mind's image of myself is basically the same as ever, so I guess your subconscious does lie. In my head I look like I'm maybe 25. I don't see an old man when I look on the mirror either, so mirrors must practice deception, too. I see a man with a white beard and bald pate, but he doesn't look grizzled and worn to me. Ah, but when I see photographs of me, then I wonder who is that old man and why do I have a picture of him?

It's my body that really let's me know I'm old. It sneaks up on you and you don't always realize what

the body is saying, but gradually you get the message. For example, I'm a walker. I have walked places all my life, often for just the pleasure of the walk. My friend, Ronald Tipton, and I used to walk up and about the hills around Downingtown as children and that exploring by foot has remained a lifelong habit for both of us. When I worked, I would walk away my lunch hours and take a long walk in the evening after I got home. And these days I go every morning to one of our local parks and traipse away four or five miles of varied terrain, up hill and down.

But then I was passing everyone who appeared before me and if walking with companions would need slow or stop occasionally to allow them to keep up. Now I notice everyone is passing me. I feel I am stepping out at a good pace, my same old pace, but apparently not. I also know I am walking the same distance in more time.

Ignoring some recent health issues, such as my half-paralyzed right hand, the two main fingers stiffened

by arthritis, there is another obvious indicator that I have moved into old age. Strength. I was never an Arnold Scwartznegger, but I had some amount of strength. I us to lift weights to keep toned and I could press 120 pounds straight over my head and I did arm curls with 35 pound dumbbells. Now I struggle to carry a forty pound bag of kitty litter into the house.

Don't take this little missive as morbid. It isn't focusing on death. Death isn't just around the corner. Remember, the CDC says I have 19 more years...at least. No, I am just being realistic and admitting that in many ways I am pass it. I'm content with that. I'm happy with that. Much of the fuss and feathers of life are over. I look forward to a simpler, perhaps more placid remaining 20% of it.

Also my big hope is I will return to regular entries in what have been becoming my long neglected blogs.

How Did We Come to This? Chapter 2: Twenty Years in a Flash as The Kid Becomes The Old Goat

We Are Independent Trust took off under the guidance of Benny Terrific. Business expanded and stock climbed, yet down in the dark, cool heart of the windowless recesses of Info Machine Processing (IMP) it stubbornly clunked along on outdated systems and over-the-hill sorters. But the Climbers and their Sherpas at the higher peaks of WAIT Mountain were proud of their antique equipment, arrogant in fact. They bragged about how they climbed this multibillion-dollar baby on four-point crampons and frayed manila rope (NOTE: That is just climbing equipment from way back when. I just wanted a different kind of trope here than my original “Modal T Ford” as my metaphor. Just trying not to be too cliché here, but then maybe it doesn’t work when you spend more time explaining it than it was to write it because you think most people probably won’t know what crampons and manila rope is. Anyway, I digress.))

The Kid didn’t share IMP’s smugness. The Info Machine Processing Department might be married to its 16-bit world; he was not. The Kid had stepped into a hand-on labor intense world and was set on modernization.

He didn’t know if he knew what he was doing, but he did it anyway.

For his first project he automated the lockbox operation after a lot of working the numbers to sell Senior Management on the value of remittance machines and envelope extractors.

Now for the uninitiated, we will define lockbox. What The Kid knew at the time as a lockbox might be what a lot of people picture, a big contraption that looks much like a giant padlock that Realtors hang on sale property doorknobs. These contraptions open by a key the Realtor has and hold inside keys to the property.

Lockbox in the bank was something else altogether. Let’s say you receive your electric bill with a return envelope. You write a check and mail it in that envelope. The address on the return is a post office box number. You may think you are sending this payment to the utility company, but actually you are sending it to their bank. It goes to a box at the post office and someone from the bank, with a key to that box (see lockbox again) picks it up and all the other returned envelops in the box. [Remember now, we are talking 30 years ago. There was no online banking and very little pay-by-phone. There wasn’t an Internet, no Email. Bills were received in the mail and paid through the mail with paper checks.]

All those bits of paper had to be handled and in the case of WAIT, these handlers were people, many, many people, who sat at desks all night long tearing open envelopes and reconciling checks to accounts.

Now before we cast The Kid in the villainous role of putting people out of work there are two things. In those bygone days of yesterday WAIT was a benevolent dictator with a no fire policy. Yes, you heard me correctly; they did not fire the people when the machines were plugged in. Places were found for them. Secondly, because of the machines WAIT could market their lockbox operation to more clients than ever and in a few years as many people were sitting at machines as once had been sitting at desks, They were just able to open more envelopes and process more checks in the time they sat there.

Over the next few years, The Kid converted check statement storage from account basis to bulk filing over a weekend even though everyone in the industry said it couldn’t be done. He got rid of keypunch and moved up to key-to-disk and then moved further directly to mainframe. But The Kid was looking beyond mainframe.

He was pushing for PC usage. It was a tough fight, for the Masters of IMP were dedicated to the mainframe. PCs might be nice for home users and their little Pac-Man games, but would never be practical for business use. The Mainframe would always rule.

The Kid was also campaigning for image storage, for check safekeeping, for many other projects that others always seemed to find reasons why they wouldn’t work. There are stories to tell of those efforts, but not here, not now. Someday we may.  In any case, Ross Rollins’ Division had gained a reputation for being the innovator and the rule breaker, and The Kid was known far and wide (well far and wide within WAIT anyway).

Meanwhile the Eighties were drawing to a close and Benny Terrific had grown rich and suddenly a trumpet sounded, a scroll was unrolled, and it was declared throughout the kingdom that Benny Terrific was going to retire.

Benny passed the reigns over to Penn Letterer.  Letterer was a long term We Are Independent Truster, an old time lender and Senior Manager of the Business’ Best Friend (as long as they can pay) Department. He took over the crown and WAIT dripped back into a period of steady-as-it-goes.

One thing that went when Letterer assumed the top loft was that Assistant-to-the-Chairman position (originally Assistant-to-the-President position).  Perhaps Letterer just didn’t feel he needed an assistant; perhaps he saw it as an indulgence and added expense. Difficult to say why he axed the position, but it meant Flip Wineberry had no more cozy office next door to the throne.

But don’t concern yourself with the fate of Flip Wineberry; he has a major role at the end of this story. He didn’t go away, he simply slithered from Department to Department as the years slipped by.

Lydia Metermaid remained relatively quiet during the Letterer years.

Meanwhile, The Old Goat was doing fine. He had become well known throughout WAIT as kind of the shadow behind Rollins, which suited him just fine. More important to him was being both liked and respected by people.

The Kid was chosen as one of the bank representatives to ACES (American Commercial Enterprise System). This was a training program for schoolteachers, who earned continuing education credits for taking a semester of ACES. Each week they would visit a different corporation. It might be Delmarva Power & Light (which became Conectiv which became DelMarVa) or Rollins Cablevision (which became so many different cable companies I’ve lost track until it is now Comcast) and so forth.

The teachers liked visiting We Are Independent Trust better than anybody in the whole universe. I’ll get to why in a moment. WAIT’s ACES presentation was a series of short talks given by four or five people describing different areas of the bank, usually one from BBF (Business’ Best Fiend – oops Friend, All Branches and Vaults, Trust Us We’re Trust, Human Resources and IMP.  The Old Goat was the representative from IMP (Why this was so is yet another tale for another time.).  Each would talk for about fifteen minutes, describe what their area did, what kind of attributes were looked for in staff and then answer questions.

Afterward, all went to dinner, which is why the teachers loved WAIT.

In those days on the top floor of the headquarters was an upscale exclusive restaurant. Its exclusiveness was determined, of course, by money. If you could afford to pay a couple thousand dollars a year to buy a membership, you got the privilege of dining there, paying for overpriced expensive meals, and gaining exclusivity from those who were smart enough not to pay two thousand dollars a year just to eat at a stuffy diner.  Since it was in the bank’s building and also served for that right to be there by servicing the Officer’s Dining Room. Officers of the bank could invite business guests to a meal at the Restaurant, all on the bank. The ACES Representatives, officers all, took the teachers.  They were treated to a charming private room, attentive service and delicious food. Why wouldn’t they love WAIT the most.

The early Nineties continued to be bright times for The Kid. But beneath this seemingly solid footing ran a fault line about to be shaken.

By the mid-Nineties, Penn Letterer was thinking of retiring. He decided to remain Chairman and give up being President.  But instead of doing the sensible thing and naming a new President in his place, he created a co-presidency and named two men to fill this two-headed monster: Cuddy Bear and Hobart Wazza Goodguy. A revolution was thus fused.

Flip Wineberry continually moved here and there during these changes, somehow always plopping into a leather chair in a high-minded sounding position, never really doing anything earthshaking, just floating about under the radar. In the near mid-Nineties he found himself in the Sales Uplifting Division, manager over a black woman named Dynamic Jones, who was creating a new staff development program for WAIT, and over a white woman named Tilda Childspeak, who administered a sales tool database called Twinning.

The head of Operations for the Bank, Craig List, Master of the Mainframe now running a fiefdom of desktop PCs, retired even though he was only in his fifties. Although he had not been very visionary about the role of PCs, he was astute enough to see a future coming he wished to escape. He took his marbles, and by now he had many, many marbles and left to enjoy life. He was The Kid’s boss’s boss (that being Ross Rollins).  List’s protégé, Jim Herring became Senior Manager of IMP.

Something happened that should have reminded The Kid of something important to his own future.

Herring split All Things Deposited Division in two.

Ross Rollins remained the Head of All Things Deposited, but lost half his former venue of rule, a section now made its own division called Spittin’ Out Data. The Kid continued as Operations, Methods and Project Manager for both divisions. (He was now also the budget coordinator for both.)

The Spittin’ Out Data area had been under a woman named Teah Plunker since the year The Kid came to WAIT. She was a most wonderful gal who had started at We Are Independent Trust the year The KID turned four years old.  The Kid was playing sandbox at Kindergarten and Teah was already spittin’ out data. Yeah, she spend her whole adult life in that same department, although when she started it was more sort bins, comptrollers and spreadsheets than the electronic and mechanical marvel of the Nineties. By the time The Kid came to The Bank 35 years after her, she was running that area.  But fifteen years later, just after publically trumpeting her 50 years of service, a bonanza of positive imagery for WAIT, Teah was brutally shoved into a corner and given busywork for the remaining decade of her life.

An applications manager from IMP, Romeo Casanova, replaced her as Spittin’ Out Data Manager.  The Kid had worked with Romeo on projects, served with him on the Security Committee and liked the man, but Romeo was in over his head and did not last long heading Spittin’ Out Data. While Romeo’s mind seem unable to twist itself around the business subtly of his division, he had no problem wrapping himself around the available ladies. Within weeks he began an affair with one of the women working for him, which eventually resulted in his own divorce. He did marry this woman and presumably they have lived happily ever after, but neither of them did so in Spittin’ Out Data. She was transferred to some other far corner of the company.

While Romeo was being successful in romance he managed to butcher the golden goose, botching up the profits from Lockbox by over-hiring and under-controlling costs. He went back to IMP and was replaced by Willy Doitagain.

And then The Kid looked in the mirror one morning and saw all these gray hairs. He had turned somehow into The Old Goat. It was then he remembered that important thing about Ross Rollins and himself. Ross Rollins was eleven years his senior.  That was the fault line in his working life.

Ross Rollins announced he was going to retire.

Everything was about to change.

How Big was My Vanity?

"Yessir," says the young lady, "you are a premium Customer."

      That is good to hear and what it means is I have the Golden Ticket or the gold yearly maintenance contract anyway.

      "We could have a technician out to your place this morning."

      Technician is it? I'm old enough to remember a day when people had titles that actually meant something.  In this case, technician means a plumber. A plumber is a person who works with lead, although they don't make pipes out of lead anymore since they found out it tends to kill people. But I still prefer plumber because that tells me this person can unclog drains and fix drips...presumably. My great grandfather was in the building trade and he had four sons. One was a carpenter, one was an electrician, one was a plumber and one was a bookkeeper. What they were was what they did. None was ever called a technician.

    "Well," I said, "that's fine, but could we schedule it for next week (it was 7:00 Friday morning when I made the call). How about Tuesday."

     So Tuesday between 8:00 and 10:00 AM was when it would be, assuming the drip didn't turn back to a flood despite the turned-off shut off valves. If those shut-off valves were to fail altogether we would have to shut down the entire system and no one wants to go days with no flowing water in the house. Been there, done that and don't want to go back.

    But why are we waiting if the plumb...sorry, technician could come this very day?

    Because the Little Woman (which is probably the wrong euphemism for someone five foot ten inches tall) wanted to replace the old vanity in the bathroom. It seemed better to do it when the plumb...technician came to replace the faucet than have a second visit later. I mean, plumb...technicians never say, "Oh don't worry about a second call, we don't charge for that." We can use the weekend to go shop both a new vanity and new faucet.

    Naturally the young lady on the phone offered to have the plumb...technician bring their catalogue with him as a nice convenience to us, but you know that convenience would have a price. I'm sure they have nice stuff, but we're bargain basement people I fear and their catalogue items are probably a few floors higher.

      Saturday morning we are off to the home supply stores.

     We had barely gotten up the road,when it dawned on me I had forgotten to do any measuring. I meant to and didn't, which happens a lot being an old guy. We do a U-turn (legal in Delaware) and go back hope and I measure. I don't want the plumber coming and saying this thing won't fit.  It's measure or regret, I alway say.

      First off, we have a tiny bathroom. There is space for a tub, a toilet, a sink and the person using them.  It is not a designer bath, no place for bidets and double sinks, lounge chairs and makeup desks. It's pretty utilitarian and that's about it. Years ago we installed a vanity. It was twenty inches wide. I screwed a toilet paper holder into one side. The other side was up against the wall.

     Now we finally get to the home supply store, Lowe's.

     There is a number of vanities to look at and select, but there is not one that comes as small as twenty inches wide. The smallest in any shape, style or stature is 24 inches.

     We can do it. Twenty-four inches will fit. Anything bigger and when you go to sit on the toilet you'll be sitting in the sink, but 24 will fit.

     The price tag on most of the displayed items won't fit though. Not just the price of the vanities, but with most you also have to buy a sink separately.  But there is one my wife likes and the cost isn't bad and it includes the sink. It seems ideal, except it is "special ordered" with a two-week wait until delivery.

    The plumb...technician is scheduled in three days.

    And about this time a salesman ambles up to us. He says the wrong thing.

     "We just upgraded our whole selection. We got rid of all the low-end product. You'll find everything nicely upscaled now, no more of the more shoddy items."

      My wife thought that was plum crazy (or is it "tech crazy" now). We are not upscale people. Oh no, when it comes to scales we're on the down-low. There are a lot of people like us who can't go upscale. Call us shoddy or not, why would a big box store do away with the low end customer, especially in this economy?

     Next stop, Home Depot.

     There was a bit less selection, but they still had "shoddy" along with the upscale, nothing less than 24 inches wide, though. Lo and behold, my wife did find a vanity, a darker wood than our old, which came complete with a white sink at a sale price. She liked it because it had two drawers on one side, not just a big hollow opening inside.

     Right across the aisle were some nice looking faucets just the right size for this vanity.

     We had our new vanity and faucet, we hauled them home and now it was just wait for the plumb...technician to come on Tuesday morning and  snap everything into place. What could possibly go wrong now?