Here until Christmas Day 2043!

I was reading a New York Times publication called Booming, a newsletter all about baby boomers. One of the articles referenced a Web site called Deathclock.com

Yes, it’s true. Baby boomers are obsessed with every aspect of our precious lives including the need to know the exact moment when (or should I say if?) we will actually die. Your birth date, outlook on life and body mass index is all the DeathClock needs to tell you the day you will die and how many seconds of your life remain before you meet your maker. 

            I’m a bit confused about my own demise though. I made the mistake of checking the “DeathClock” twice in ten minutes. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with my first prognosis which said I would die on New Year’s Eve in the year 2042, one month shy of my 95^th birthday. Sure, given a choice I would prefer to die early on New Year’s Day after watching New Year’s Rockin’ Eve hosted by a hologram of Dick Clark, a flute of Piper-Heidsieck Rare 2002, at the ready.

            But, in doing a quick fact check for this post, I was surprised and a bit chagrined to discover that the Death Clock may not be completely accurate. My second turn at bat revealed that my departure from earth would be Christmas Day, 2043. Either way it seems I’m destined to go out on a major holiday. Right, I get another whole year, which is wonderful, but what if I go before I have a chance to open my presents?

Note to family: Be sure to save your Christmas gift receipts for any gifts you plan to give me in 2043. Whether I get to open my presents or not, you’ll need them. On the other hand, given what you now know, perhaps a pearl gray suit and a new pair of shoes would be an ideal choice. Make sure you get me pointy black ones.

And don’t plan any big New Year’s Eve celebration for yourself that year. Considering how old I’ll be when I pass, there won’t be any money left for you celebrate. Given my entitled baby boomer status in this world, I expect an elaborate funeral service mourning my passing. I want Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing my favorites, live and in person.     

Naturally, I’m thrilled to know that I am going to be here another 30 years. I suspect a lot of baby boomers will be around to celebrate turning 90 and even 100. Of course the generations following us will have a substantial burden. For one thing they will be stuck in whatever middle management jobs still exist because we boomers will be holding on to our senior staff roles as long as possible…and collecting Social Security to boot.

It’s tempting I’m sure to blame us for refusing to step off center stage. Once you’ve been in the limelight though, even if it’s limited to being one in a group of millions, it’s very hard to let go.

Listen: younger people are just as prone to this disease as we are. That’s why so many reality show contestants continue to grasp at anything they can to extend their time in the spotlight. The bachelor’s Sean comes to mind. He headed for Dancing with the Stars as soon as he proffered the final rose. Then he agreed to marry his true love on the tube. That is until he may have decided to postpone the wedding. Would you be shocked if he gained 150 pounds so he could get on the Biggest Loser?

Not that I envy Sean. But I do wish I could arrange to have a camera follow me around for my 840 million remaining seconds.

Don’t Like the Election Results? Secede!

It’s been a week since the election. By now many, if not most of us, have settled down, relieved that campaign ads have given way to Christmas shopping commercials. But not everyone has come to terms with the election results. There are those who are so unhappy that the President has been reelected, that they are petitioning the US Government for the right to secede from the Union. According to the Huffington Post, citizens in 34 states have filed secession petitions. Any petition that receives 25,000 signatures within 30 days must be reviewed and responded to by the Obama Administration.    

            Most petitioners claim to be dissatisfied with the way the Federal Government spends our money and they are not happy about the way our rights are abridged by agencies such as the TSA. I can’t say that I blame them but I am a bit perplexed that they waited until after the election results were in to decide that secession was the best course of action. These problems go back to the Bush era. Of course secession requests do seem to follow Presidential elections. When Bush won and Kerry lost in 2004, there were petitions.

            What if no one objected and 30 or more states were gone? Would these states ultimately get together and form an even more perfect union? Or is it more likely that some states would band together and others, like Texas, would return to its lone star origins?

            Here is a list of the 34 states with citizens that thought it would be better to go it alone:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida,Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virgnia and Wyoming.,

            I guess the worst case scenario would be 34 separate countries. If I wanted to drive to New Jersey to visit family and friends, I would need a passport which I would have to show to the good people of the great nations of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I wonder what New Jersey would require of a visitor from another country? What if there were no treaties between Tennessee and New Jersey? What if there was a dispute and the President of Tennessee issued a travel warning about the former Garden State? On the other hand, a trip to Atlantic City would sound exotic. I mean gambling in a foreign land would be cool assuming the currency exchange rates were favorable. Would the Tennessee Moon Pie be the equivalent of the New Jersey cannoli?  

            I suppose the original Confederacy could get together but at the moment of this writing, only ten of the eleven states are in. So far Virginia, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee hasn't sent a petition. Let me say right now that if Virginia isn’t going to be part of this deal I’m out. Any nation that I’m a member of has to have a access to the Chesapeake Bay when crabs are in season. If they have to be imported the price will be outrageous. Equal opportunity for all in the new Confederacy goes without saying, but I don’t foresee a problem. This is the 21^st century after all.

            I really suspect that the petitioners haven’t thought through all of the ramifications of a successful secession. At first blush it sounds fine if you’re Texas. You have the fifth largest economy in the world. Why not go your own way? After all, they’ve been there before. But if a whole bunch of states are suddenly on their own, a treaty with the USA stipulating an alliance in the event of an attack on either country would be a lot less attractive if the USA consists of Vermont, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Hawaii. It’s a dangerous world out there. I wonder if the Texan that filed that petition considered the fact that a nation of 26 million people would be dwarfed by its neighbor to the south. Mexico has 112 million people. The outcome at the Alamo probably would be the same as it was last time.  

            One good thing about secession as an exercise at least, is that it forces us to recognize that regardless of who is in the White House we’re all in this together. I mean I don’t want to pay for an International permit just so I can drive to the Kentucky Derby. God Bless America.  

Copyright 2012, Len Serafino. All rights reserved.

Why Time Moves Faster Than It Used To

As I get older I get the feeling that time is moving by much faster than it did when I was younger. As a child for example, I always thought that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas morning was the equivalent of the entire time I had been alive up to that point. And Christmas Eve was always the longest night of the year!
Remember when summer lasted forever? Nowadays summer feels like a long weekend. The time between Memorial Day and Labor Day, once a sweet eternity, is now a madcap rush, not unlike the feeling one gets while racing down the freeway to the airport. With one eye on the road the other looking for state troopers, your hope fades that you will ever make the last flight home on a Friday evening. And so it is with summer. Why does time seem to go by so much faster now? Some say it’s because we are much busier than our ancestors ever were. No doubt farmers living in the pre-industrial age, tilling their fields with a horse drawn plow had loads of time to spare. Imagine how much time housewives had on their hands in the days before dishwashers, washing machines, dryers and microwaves. Yeah, leisurely lives they led. They had it made.
There are some theories floating in cyberspace about the likelihood that time is actually speeding up. One theory suggests that something called the Schumann Resonance or heartbeat of Earth used to be 7.83 cycles per second. Apparently it’s been rising since 1980. It is now over 12 cycles per second, leaving us with the equivalent of about 16 hours per day instead of 24. Note to theorists: The missing 8 hours might be the ones that occur while you’re sleeping which would make them hard to track. The more I dig into the “Schumann Resonance” though, the more convinced I am that it has merit in at least one respect. A smart candidate for the Presidency could score serious points making 24 hours an issue. Promising to restore time to its original and rightful place in our system of government could win votes, no? Republican candidates can assign blame to the Carter Administration by suggesting that he wasted so much time that time itself started to slip away. A wily Democrat like President Obama could point to The Resonance as what the so-called Reagan revolution was really all about.
But I digress.
The fact is that man came up with the concept of time. It was man who decided that 60 seconds equals a minute and 60 minutes equals an hour. These units still exist and can be measured.
So why do we feel like time is going by faster than it used to? I am pleased to report that yesterday, December 28, 2011, I found the answer. I was shopping in a Target store in Franklin, Tennessee. As I meandered through the aisles, I happened upon a row of Hallmark and other greeting cards six feet high and fifteen feet long. Remember the date, December 28th, still 3 days before New Year’s Eve and just 3 days after Christmas. Now which greeting cards do you think I saw completely dominating the racks? If you said Valentine’s Day cards treat yourself to a Be Mine candy heart. Valentine’s Day is seven weeks away! Yet, by the time it arrives we will have been completely inundated by retail displays, advertisements and junk mail from jewelers reminding us to buy something special for that someone special in our lives. What galls me is that by the time the day arrives, by no later than 6:00 p.m. on the day itself, retailers will be restocking their shelves with St. Patrick’s Day paraphernalia.
No wonder time seems to fly by. Living in the present these days is hard work. We are always being pushed ahead to the next holiday, the next season. Does rushing each holiday really work? Is anyone reading this post ready to forget the Christmas or Hanukkah holidays? It occurs to me that I’m asking a foolish question since the business version of the Christmas season now lasts so long that one is tempted to not bother taking down the tree at all. Still are you actually ready to focus on Valentine’s Day? If you have already bought your Valentine’s Day cards, have you also mailed them? Please let me know. And while you’re at it, send me your menu for the 4th of July barbecue.

Copyright 2011, Len Serafino. All rights reserved.

A Christmas Tradition Gone Wrong

I got my Christmas shopping done early this year. I even wrapped my gifts. Judging by the heavy traffic I see near the mall, I should be feeling pretty good about not procrastinating this year. Truth be told though, I miss the hustle and bustle, mingling with the crowds, the touch of nippy weather and the devilish excitement of being the guy who got the last Xbox 360.
Christmas shopping is a chore for most of us but there is a touch of romance in the delicate art of finding something unique, desirable, and affordable for that someone special. Yes, there aren’t enough good parking spaces and by the time the Holidays arrive, thanks to retailers’ penchant for starting the season just after Memorial Day, we’re tired of Christmas decorations and Christmas music.
Nowadays you can do all of your Christmas shopping on line without even leaving the house once! It certainly has changed Christmas shopping hasn’t it? What with shipping though, you can’t wait until the last minute to shop. I waited until the very last minute one year. I decided to do all my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s sidekick on the Tonight Show, told Johnny that doing all his shopping on Christmas Eve was one of his favorite Christmas traditions. If it was good enough for Ed, wasn’t it good enough for Len? So I waited. Black Friday came and went, the short daylight days of December quickly rolled by. Of course my wife, being so much smarter than I am, got the shopping done for the kids early. She shopped for me too. I’m sure she tried to reason with me. After all, she would be the one receiving the gifts I found during my magical mystery Christmas Eve shopping tour. Regardless, I was determined to give Ed’s tradition a go.
On the afternoon of December 24th I set out for the mall. It was a bitter cold day, some scattered snow flurries made the roads just a bit slick. As I recall, parking was a problem. After circling the parking lot for an hour, I found a space about 20 miles from the mall. The stiff wind blowing in my face probably made the walk to the mall seem longer.
I knew the mall would be crowded but I have to say I never guessed that a huge mall, complete with three anchor stores, could be so jammed packed with people. If you’ve ever been sandwiched into a telephone booth trying to break the record for the Guinness Book, you’ll know exactly how I felt.
I was on a tight budget but I was determined to find something special, something that had somehow escaped the eyes of the teeming hordes of desperate shoppers. I inched my way to a discount women’s clothing shop and started going through the racks of clothing. I felt a surge of excitement when I snatched the perfect skirt and blouse combination just as a girl who looked to be about 14 reached for it. I waited in line for an hour and a half to pay for my lucky find. When I finally got to the register though, I noticed that the woman behind the counter was giving me a funny look. She said, “Is this supposed to go together?” It was then that I noticed that the blouse was orange with white polka dots and the skirt was rainbow stripes. It didn’t matter. Surely my wife would love this symbol of my adventurous spirit.
I was able to get a few other items on my list including a calendar, something my wife asks for every year to this day. Usually the theme would be the works of an artist like Renoir.
There wasn’t anything quite like that left so my wife’s calendar that year had a spectacular, full color, chicks on a Harley theme.
Exhausted, I finally finished my shopping at 8 o’clock. As I stepped out of the warm confines of the mall and into the frigid, as in single digit, night air, it suddenly occurred to me. I still had to wrap all these gifts. By the time I got home in my unheated Chevette, would I still be able to feel my fingers?
As I sat on my living room floor just a few hours before dawn, wrapping the last gift with the only thing I could find, a brown grocery store bag, I watched a Tonight Show rerun. And I had a revelation of sorts. Ed McMahon could do all his shopping on Christmas Eve for two reasons. He wasn’t living on a budget. The limo he rode in was nice and warm.

Copyright 2011 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.

Going to See Santa

Most of us had the experience of going to see Santa when we were kids. It’s a long standing tradition that is as much a part of the Holiday as hanging your stocking on Christmas Eve. I was in the local mall the other night where Santa often resides these days. Standing on the mall’s second level, I had a birds eye view of the Santa Claus spectacle. There was a long line of anxious parents and small children, many of them too young to be anxious themselves, other than the fear some may have had of this big guy with a beard in a red suit. I must say this mall’s Santa Claus looked very much like the real thing, right out of a Coke ad you might say.
A little girl, perhaps three years old, dressed in a Christmassy red and green dress, was giving her mother a very hard time about sitting with Santa so she could have her picture taken. The little girl was adorable but she was definitely not in an adoring mood. She wanted no part of the guy who is supposed to come across with all the goodies on the morning of December 25th. The child’s mother was imploring her to sit with Santa. The woman seemed, well, desperate to capture the moment on film…or I suppose should say, digitally. She sat her daughter down on Santa’s lap, then next to him and finally in front of him to no avail. As soon as the mother stepped away so the picture could be taken, the child got up and ran to her.
The elves got into the act, doing their best to bribe the kid with stuffed reindeer and then candy. No dice. Then the mother decided to let her little girl watch other children make nice with Santa. Three kids did just that but the star of my little show still demurred. I have to say I was impressed with the behavior of the other parents standing patiently on line with their restless kids. No one seemed the least bit perturbed by this child’s refusal to sit with St. Nick and no one gave the mother the evil eye for her persistence. In the end, they got the photo but Mom is in the picture too. Perhaps one day it will make for a funny story the little girl can tell her fiancé. That’s if she can find the photo 25 years from now.
My take is simple. A picture with Santa is not worth the hassle I witnessed the other night. I say this because I have never been in an adult’s home that featured a picture of the resident sitting on Santa’s lap. Now I’ll bet you have several precious photos that you’ve had retouched, blown-up and framed because they have special meaning for you. I’ll also wager that you don’t have one of you with some big, fat, oddly dressed stranger in red. Think back to your own picture with Santa. Remember the look on your face? Is that fear in your tear stained eyes or was it a side effect of the million watt flash bulb that just went off in your face?
What happens to these pictures anyway? You take them home and show them to grandparents who ooh and ahh over them, secretly wondering whether you can even trust the people who play Santa anymore. You display them on a countertop or bookshelf during the Holidays and then…you put them in a box with other photos. Listen, a few nights before my sojourn to the mall, I was wading through a huge box of old photos. Guess what I found? Right, I found several pictures of my son and daughter having the all important powwow with Mr. C. I even found one of me.
Considering how busy parents with young children are during the Holidays, I can’t imagine what possesses them to stand on a long line surrounded by crying kids. Some parents do find ways to avoid it. Recently a friend told me that he and his wife decided not to tell their children stories about Santa Claus. They felt it would be lying to them and they wanted to build trust right from the beginning. If you ask me they probably just didn’t want to wait around for the photos. The funny thing is their kids, all adults now, complain that their parents robbed them of the Santa experience. Go figure. I wonder if they were in line the other night with their little ones.

Copyright 2010 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.

Christmas Spirit

Tis the Season when priests and ministers will surely remind you during Christmas services that Christmas is first and foremost a religious celebration for Christians. Some Christians send emails making the same point: “Keep Christ in Christmas,” they say. We hear many messages about the true meaning of Christmas in the days leading up to the Holiday, sometimes delivered gently in a sermon and other times with the force of a sledgehammer.
Believers and non-believers certainly know that Christmas celebrates the miracle of the birth of Christ, a gift to mankind. That fact doesn’t slip many minds really. Aside from attending church services what should we be doing? Is it that we should spend a few moments reflecting on the birth of the savior before we shred all that colorful paper, open the boxes and pretend to love what’s inside? Is saying Grace before we devour the sumptuous foods sitting on the table sufficient acknowledgement?
A lot has been said about the way the secular aspects of Christmas have overwhelmed the religious observation of the day. I’m not sure it’s true. We attend Christmas parties in the office, in social clubs, and with friends and neighbors. I’ve never been to one that was focused on religion. Still, when I look around the room at one of these parties it’s nearly impossible to miss the smiles on the faces of the people. They may not be gathered around the piano singing the First Noel but there is a genuine softening of their features, warmth that is perhaps hidden at other times of the year. Genuine good will toward others manifests itself in conversation, hand shakes and hugs. There are no pews and no sermons but there is kindness aplenty.
And what about the parents that run out to buy gifts for their children? Yes they buy something for each other if the budget allows, but all discussion revolves around what’s best for each child. For that matter, anyone that takes the time to fight the crowds, choose a gift, buy it and wrap it simply because it’s Christmas, seems to be doing God’s work. If your heart is in the right place it seems to me that giving gifts at Christmas is a wonderful example of God’s commandment that we love our neighbors.
Many fine people donate time, money, food and clothing items during the Holiday season. They too keep Christ in Christmas and if it so happens that they are atheists, well, God is smiling just the same. His purpose in being born 2000 years ago is well served when his children lend a helping hand to those that need it. God doesn’t actually need the credit for our good works.
Consider if you will the harried moms that probably should celebrate the day after Christmas. They cook up a storm, bake till they drop, clean the house, do the lion’s share of the Christmas shopping, wrap the gifts and still they manage to look beautiful and even happy come Christmas morning. That, my friends is love on steroids. That is the marathon that in its own marvelous way is both a beautiful prayer and an angel’s Christmas Carol. What would possess a woman to run herself ragged if not a belief in the message of the Christ Child?
And while daddy may not be checking to make sure the cookies aren’t burning, he is usually the one that climbs on the roof to put decorations up, runs string after string of lights around bushes and trees, knowing just one thing for certain: In a few weeks he’ll have to take them down and it will be even colder than the day he put them up. He’s also the guy that goes to great lengths to keep his babies belief in Santa alive for one more year. He may wrestle with doubts 364 days a year, but when it comes to Christmas, count him in.
I may be crazy but people seem more forgiving this time of year. People are just cheerful at Christmas. I suppose this unbridled happiness is an artifact of childhood memories. No one ever really forgets how exciting it was to go to bed on Christmas Eve with visions of sugar plums dancing in your head. Kids go to bed that night with hope in their hearts. At Christmas, we’re all kids. We all hope. Merry Christmas.

Copyright 2008 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.