"Though I look old, I am strong and lusty." (As You Like It)

The other day I received an email from one of my kids with a link to a web site that sells "scooters". Not the kind used by kids, but the kind used by handicapped people...mostly seniors who are not able to walk. Now, I am able to walk--but not very far--without pains in my hips. It's a vascular problem. Now this email, I take it, was a nudge to me to go out and buy one of these ubiquitous machines. Nowadays they are all over the place. Only the elite and chosen elders scoot around in them. The more sedate and lower echelon elderly simply crawl around leaning on their "walkers". And the lesser than the latter cane themselves around town accompanied by their Haitian "nannies". As for me and the "nudge", I just don't feel that I am mentally ready to join the prosthetic brigade, although I realize that physically I belong. When we leave on our cruise in the next few days, the bus leaves us a good distance from the ship, and I would find it to be a slow and excruciating walk. Thus, my spouse has surreptitiously arranged for a wheelchair voyage from bus to ship. I suppose that's a kind of "break-in" training trip as a precursor to the scooter phase of my life. I may have to write a sequel to my Memoirs book to include that chapter.

Cruising is something I never did until we moved down to Florida. It's hard to believe that I've been here retired for twenty-five years. I have thoroughly enjoyed these years, cruising, playing golf, performing in shows, eating out---eating out? We eat out a lot more than we eat in. When I came here I was a strapping youth of 58 looking a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and weighing 162 lbs. of muscle. Now, because of the eating out part of retirement, I have gained a little over a pound a year and I'm now a flabby decrepit elder looking like Father Time. And why do we eat out so much you might ask? Well Rhoda is retired also and naturally doesn't care to cook as much as she once did--even though she is very good at it. I certainly don't blame her for cutting down, and if she doesn't feel like cooking--we go out. This way I will probably gain another pound-a-year so that in 2032 I'll weigh about 225 lbs.

On this cruise, then, I'll be off to a good start to that end, because besides gambling, the other thing you do on a cruise is eat. How can you refuse a juicy roll and butter and chocolate cake for dessert? And if you can't have chocolate cake when you're 83, when will you have it?