Random Thoughts on Random Things

When I was a kid growing up in Chicago, one of the joys I had was taking a nickel or a dime down to the corner store and buying some candy or gum.

My dentist loved me.

Back then (the mid 1960s, if you’re keeping score), a nickel went a long way – and a dime went twice as far.

The candy selections were unbelieveable, too … Red Hot jawbreakers; Bit O’Honey and Mary Jane, candies that took forever to chew and got stuck in your teeth; Pixy Stix, those paper tubes with Kool-Aid powder inside; Crows; Ju Ju Bees; candy buttons stuck on long strips of paper that never came off cleanly; candy cigarettes (keep your thoughts to yourself; as an adult I have never smoked cigarettes and I loved the candy ones); Snaps, those delightful candy-dusted licorice bite-sized tubes; and the bubble gum was pretty memorable as well. My personal favorites were Dubble Bubble and Bazooka, and the latter was best because it came with a little comic strip inside.

Never mind the classic large candy bars like Hershey or Almond Joy; those were one item for a dime, while that same dime at the corner store bought a lot of what we all called “penny candy.”

As we grow older, of course, the taste for such things diminishes, almost in perfect ratio to how fast the price for them goes up. And some of the candy just stops being produced. Try finding Bit O’Honey or Mary Janes today (outside of your friendly neighborhood Cracker Barrel). My sweet tooth has always been active, though, and my dentist still thinks very highly of me. Especially when he needs a new car or swimming pool or something.

Recently, for the first time in a couple of decades, I bought some Bazooka. I was shopping for a few items and saw a display of the newly-packaged Bazooka bubble gum, and said to myself, “What the heck!  Let’s do it!” And into the cart it went.

Today’s Bazooka is advertised as “original” and the taste is very much as I remember it. So, sadly, is the duration of the taste – it takes maybe ten minutes of serious mastication before the classic flavor of the gum is but a memory. What’s really changed over the years, in addition to the price, is the comic strip that comes with the gum.

Nowadays, you get a comic strip that features guest stars, usually from the world of sports.  Sure, Bazooka Joe and his Gang are present (and it’s nice to see they haven’t grown up in the last 60 years or so), but so are today’s sports stars, and the comics are just … different.  Not bad, not great, just different. And the jokes fall very, very flat, even more so than the originals from my childhood days.

I understand evolution in products.  Some things, however, should be left the way they were.

* * * * *

In the year since my fun-and-frolic with health problems, I’ve had to learn a whole new routine.

Overall, I take a total of 14 different medications at three different times of day. Mornings are easy (and the largest group to take as well); just gulp ‘em down before breakfast.

Bedtime is just as easy, with only five to swallow right before I head off to the Land of Nod.

It’s the dose in the middle, the smallest (only three pills), that gives me issues. I’m supposed to take it just before dinner, but many times I find myself away from home and don’t have the meds with me.

By the time I get home, it’s too late to worry about those, so I just take the bedtime ones and hit the sack.

It’s rough when one routine runs head-on into another routine.  I just hope I’m not occasionally missing anything that’s going to come back later and bite me.

* * * * *

As I get farther and farther into my dotage, I notice that I am not aging very gracefully.

My knees, which have never liked stairs, now have shown that they don’t like it when I stand up. That’s getting more and more difficult to do as I grow in years.

Joints make noises that they never used to make, and the two places where my arm was broken last year give me at least a week’s notice if rain or cold weather is on the way.

I’m rapidly running out of hair on top of my head, but I started compensating for that by growing a nice little beard.  I tell people who notice the top that it’s all moving to the bottom of my face.

Overall, I am adjusting poorly to my rapidly approaching 70th birthday in less than two years.

But I plan to make it there.