TIME MARCHES ON

Blog number 428 **** 02 October 2010

I ain't got nothing to report or to write about. I just wanted to write. I write, you read. That's the way it goes. I didn't make the rules. I am happy with the circumstances. I just hope you're obedient to them. I don't think that's asking too much, and even if it is, too bad. Suck it up.

Many years ago, when I was young and still very shy, I started going to college again at Compton Junior College in Compton, California - a suburb of Los Angeles. I happened to see this male student wearing really short shorts. A bunch of girls were tagging along with him. I was very envious of his strength of character in dressing that way and seemingly not caring what anyone thought. I wished I had that much confidence. It wasn't until years later that I realized the guy wasn't that confident at all. He was gay.

I keep going back over my past, trying to think of something that happened to me or around me that I could write about, but so far, whatever I come up with, I am pretty sure I have written about it before. It's a shame , but we old people don't have that many stories to tell, so we tend to repeat ourselves. Not our fault at all.

You would think, wouldn't you, that young people would have that problem more that those who have lived a long time and therefore have had more things happen to them? Maybe the young aren't interested in telling stories? Interested instead in the next best thing coming up?

I like my new centrifugal vacuum cleaner. It's heavier to push around and the switch and cord aren't handy, but that thing can vacuum! You can use it like a lawn mower. Back and forth across the carpet, "mowing" one line up, a new one down, presto! Carpet's clean. No back and forth in one place and then stooping to pick up what the vacuum refuses to consider as anything to do with it and its desires. It has one malfunction and I am pretty sure from the forensic evidence that it was returned by another customer probably for the same problem.

The mechanism that raises and lowers the brush from the carpet is not connected to anything. It doesn't work. At first I was going to call and send it back, but I got to thinking that we are never going to have shag rugs, so what the hay. I heard a comedian the other day talking about Americans whining about petty things and I kind of took that to heart. Here I gripe about my new vacuum cleaner and there exists people that don't even have anyplace to put a floor.

We looked at the vacuum cleaners at Walmart's a few days ago and noticed row upon row of centrifugal vacuum cleaners and none of the old kind. If there were any, I didn't see them. I didn't look for them, maybe that's why, but I have a feeling there weren't any. I can well imagine that in a few years the non-centrifugal vacuum cleaners will be completely obsolete and you won't be able to find them anywhere except in Thrift Stores. I don't know who would buy a new one now.

And the weeds in my lawn have won. I give up. I'm going to wait a couple of years to see what happens to it, but it looks like I will have a rock garden in my back yard in the future. Or maybe I'll just mow the weeds and pretend it's grass. I can do that. My eyes ain't all that good anyhow.

Well, I got my wish-to-write out of my system for now, so...bye!