A Modern Day Dilemma

I know all the reasons I'm supposed to hate Jeff Bezos. He's vilified by my friends for being a billionaire, underpaying his workers, giving nothing to charity, putting local stores out of business, polluting the environment with his cartons and paying less in taxes than they do. As a matter of principle-the principle being that one shouldn't support such an evil man - my friends won't become prime members. (Not worried about my having sold my soul to the devil,they will, however, stream TV from my Amazon Prime account and order emergent essentials like a plastic strainer for kefir curds or a waterproof dog blanket for a semi-incontinent cat.) But, unlike my ethical friends, I don't hate Jeff. I LOVE him. He is the genie I always wanted. Raised on 1950s TV, I thought all genies lived in a lamp. But Jeff, my genie, lives inside my computer. I think of an item that I really, really want...desperately and immediately. A callus remover, for example. I push a button and like magic, it appears in my lobby the next day. My feet go from repulsive to beautiful in 24 hours, all because of Jeff. I know people will say he's a mercenary pig and he fulfills my every wish, not because he's a benevolent genie, but because he's making money off of materialistic jerks like me. But I beg to differ. When I urgently needed a nutribullet, received it and realized there was no way in hell that I would ever use it since it's for making shakes and I don't like shakes, Jeff said,"I'll refund your money, but keep the overpriced shaker anyway. It may come in handy." Would a mercenary pig be so magnanimous? Let me now talk about the origins of the Covid 19 pandemic. I know this seems like an abrupt switch in gears, but bear with me. As of now, scientists are not sure where or how it started. Maybe in a wet market in Wuhan in a pangolin or raccoon dog. Or maybe not. Possibly in a bat. Or possibly not. But I have watched enough detective shows(many on Amazon, in fact) to know that when you want to find the culprit, you follow the money. And as far as I know, pangolins, bats and raccoon dogs are not getting rich from the pandemic. It's possible they have Swiss bank accounts, but unlikely. Who is getting rich from the pandemic? Need you ask? My genie, Jeff. Due to the pandemic, local stores closed. You could not go to your usual purveyor of plastic kefir curd strainers or waterproof dog blankets because their stores were shuttered. Your sole recourse was to buy them on Amazon. True, the evidence against Mr. Bezos is merely circumstantial , but pretty damning. So, as you may have noted, given my love of Jeff as my wish fulfiller on the one hand and my strong suspicion of Jeff as the mad scientist who started the pandemic on the other hand, I am torn. When he was just a selfish billionaire, I could rationalize paying $130 a year for instant gratification and a great streaming channel. But if he started the pandemic ,and I keep paying Amazon because I am selfish and acquisitive, I will really have crossed over to the dark side. Aw, F**K it. I'm staying on the dark side.

Reality Bites

If someone woke you up at 4 in the morning from a dead sleep and asked you how old you were, what would you say? I would say "35." I'm not 35, but there is a disconnect between how old I feel mentally and how old I actually am. I'm stunned when I buy an airline ticket and develop arthritis in my index finger scrolling back 400 years to my year of birth. I'm astonished that people born in 1990 are more than two years old. And how is the Vietnam War history and not current events? I'm on zoom 12 times a day. With the appropriate filter applied , I could pass for 35. Well maybe not 35, but definitely no more than 45. And in the 20 watt lighting my deranged designer installed in my bathroom, I look no older than my law school graduation picture. Apparently, there's a large gulf between how old I look and how old I think I look. At McDonald's,when I order coffee, the 14 year old cashiers type in "senior " without my asking for it. I save 9 cents, which is nice, but I'd rather they viewed me as "junior." On the LIRR, the conductors never ID me when I ask for a senior ticket. Of course I want the senior discount (since it's hefty,)but I want them to be incredulous that I qualify. Yesterday, an old lady gave me a seat on the bus. I wished her dead and took the seat. My friends should provide a reality check. I've known them 40 years, so unless I met them even before I was in utero, I must be more than 35. But they all look the way they did when I met them...give or take a few pounds. It's not my myopia or cataracts. Other people their age look old and decrepit. Not my friends.They look youthful and radiant. But, and this is a big but: they have children who are over 35 and some of their children have children. They cannot wake up in the middle of the night and say they're 35.Their children provide undeniable proof that they are entitled to senior coffee, senior fare and a seat on the bus. I have no such proof. So if you wake me in the middle of the night and ask me my age, I will say "35" and then kill you for having woken me up. A 35 year old needs her beauty sleep.

Screw the Obits

Don't deny it. You always read the obits.The big journalistic obits , not the small paid obits.(You possibly read the small ones too. Maybe you play the game I invented. You try to guess the age of the deceased from the photo. Sometimes there's a photo of a young pretty woman who looks to be about 20. Before you get weepy, you look at the hairstyle. If it looks like it was from a 1940s war movie, you know, without reading the obit, that the dead woman was around 100, and you save your tears. It's a bit harder to gauge the age with men, although a straight part of the hair--even on a 20 year old -tells you he's either your peer or your grandfather.).But, I digress. You read the big obits methodically. First, you look at the age. If they are your age or younger , you say "so young" and then wonder if they died in a freak accident or of a disease you might potentially come down with. Up to age 90, they are still "so young," but you're fairly certain an Alpine avalanche was not the cause of death. Next, you get to the meat of the obit: what they did to merit this gigantic obit. Here is when you're overwhelmed with emotion. Awe. Worship....and admit it, overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. This one saved 2000 Jews by getting them Guatemalan visas. Clearly , a saint. And you- you've done nothing for the Central American refugees at the border. That one won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Obviously, a genius. You got 100% on the chemistry Regents. Why haven't you won a Nobel or even washed a beaker? She wrote the seminal treatise on climate change. Patently, a forward thinker. You can't figure out recyling rules. He created Hustler Magazine. You, well, you have certain expertise...You could have done that. I know you will not abandon the obits, even though they make you feel as if you've wasted your life. So, I hope the following list of what I accomplished during the pandemic will give you some perspective. -I did not become fluent in either Swahili or Mandarin -I did not win a grammy for the best country song -I did not create a Trump meme -I did not learn how to code(or even what that means) -I did not discover a new element(and I know only eight of the old ones) -I did not write a book or even a blog -I did not learn how to cook -I still can't knit -I did not collaborate with Shonda Rhimes on a TV series -I did not help the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation For what I hope are two reasons, you probably won't find my obit in the New York Times any time soon. -