“Who’s the Boss will be back in a moment.”

Sitting on a porch, older, thinking back to what I wanted to be when I was a younger man who could still make things happen for myself I remember I wanted to go into advertising. I wanted to write a catch phrase here and a jingle there that would catch on and get on the air. Then I was told by big shot advertising agent Dr. Dare that it’s a cut throat industry so I thought maybe I’d never make it out there. I didn’t go into advertising like Angela, the boss of a guy she adored, and his daughter Samantha I adored even more. Like Tony, for the next twenty years I found myself carrying around a large set of keys with far too many doors leading to large rooms never occupied before.

Around the time of high school graduation I was given the tip of a lifetime by my friends’ parents infatuation with my future if I were to remain in town or head to college for at least a semester. It was expressed to me that the parents of my peers are boomers and many of them will grow out of illustrious careers and their families will need to hold them in arrears for all the time spent on rumors that there was a proper place for them in heaven and all that preparation. The vision I had from this trusted conversation was to buy a giant Victorian home close to a train station that would be a final living space for a hundred people over the years who lived long lives and could escape to here, away from somewhere. In the interim they would feed me invaluable knowledge and substantial wealth since their families left them to forget all fears with the likes of someone else. We would play euchre and listen to music from the sixties and seventies, take gobs of medicine, and say anything. This was their home and we would live how they wanted until their dying breath doing everything all grown up and in depth. 

Instead of running with advice about pursuing the field of geriatrics I closed my heart and found my mind attending a formal institution of higher learning and other antics. I began to think out loud that we could cheat death by calling old age a disease and not a natural cause of living, finding a cure or something. I was going down the wrong path thinking for myself from a formal education perspective and drunk from the math. I should have listened to my heart and followed my ideas summoned from 80’s entertainment that I reflected. Instead I listened to the professors and professionals who would dare me to stray away from the point I am now where I can befriend the old in my own maturation.

Originally posted April 2023