How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Shit Happens

One of the reasons I started writing these stories is that when you look up Baby Boomer Blogs they are all pretty depressing.  Maybe information on social security, medicare, how to care for aging parents, downsizing and everything else we as baby boomers are supposed to be worried about are important.  I want to read about more positive things myself. Stuff is going to happen to all of us as we age but stuff happened to us when we were younger too.

Back in my ice show skating days there was a year when everyone was having trouble with routines, getting their costumes done and just showing up for rehearsal's. The show director showed no sympathy for anyone and that year he had a big sticker on the back of his clipboard that said "Shit Happens". If you mentioned an excuse or complaint the back of the clipboard flashed in front of your face and you knew to close your mouth. In other words, no excuses or moaning, just put your skates on and glide on through life with a smile on your face.

I put that philosophy to good use three weeks ago tomorrow. As we age
there seems to be more and more discussion on slowing down, being more fearful of one dreaded ailment or another and forget doing all those things you have enjoyed doing all your life.  Go get a recliner, cable TV and a closet full of pills because you retired to the recliner. God forbid that you would go skating and break a leg or don't live in a house with stairs that you won't be able to climb next year. 

                                            Our Stairmaster

Three weeks ago I got tired of looking through dirty windows. Time to get the little ladder out and at least do the bottom part (I do live in a building with twelve foot tall windows). No big deal except when you step off the window sill and just miss the top of the two foot ladder. I crashed to the floor with all my weight on the back of my right shoulder. Oh, shit did happen! My right shoulder was at a very strange angle and my arm felt really different with a considerable amount of pain. Time for the emergency room only problem was that Marshell was on the roof and no way for me to tell him we had a problem.

                                      Scene of the accident

Two hours later I met Marshell at the door and suggested we go to the emergency room. Living in rural Oklahoma picking an emergency room can be a challenge.  The closet one is one we have had experience with before - veto. We could drive 35 or 40 miles to a larger town but I was not bleeding, only in pain - veto.  So we drove 20 miles to a new facility that turned out to be excellent. Verdict....dislocated shoulder (easily put back into place after much pain meds) and....a proximal humerus fracture (not so good).

My precious Dad was a pharmacist for 52 years. Growing up I can never remember going to the doctor except for stitches, a broken wrist and mono. Dad had a basic distrust of doctors after many years of seeing what drugs they gave to people and what the drugs did to them. If my brothers and I had a sore, swollen throat a nurse came to the house and gave us a shot of penicillin or our necessary immunizations. I never remember him going to a doctor or taking any medicine except for a Bromo Seltzer for stomach problems mainly because my Mother drove him crazy. After I got married a typical present was a Physicians Desk Reference that was so big it could have been a boat anchor but actually described every drug on the market, what they were for and most important - the side effects. Since I was not a baseball or a football fan I became pretty well versed in pharmaceuticals in order to have long conversations with my Dad.

After several stints in college majoring in how to be a Broadway star, an artist or an English teacher I went back at the age of twenty-eight with two boys ages one and five and a husband who complained every day about my going to college.  My goal was to obtain a degree in pre-med. Wow, I only needed fifty-two hours of math and science to graduate. The laughable thing about that was according to my SAT scores I was so bad in those two subjects it was a wonder I got accepted to college anywhere.  Besides that I needed to make all A's to bring up my past college grades for a future a medical school to even open my application must less read it.

My Dad had passed away before I got the brilliant idea to become a doctor but somehow I think he was proud of me for graduating from college with an overall 3.7 average with a degree in Biology and Chemistry. The medical school story is one I will leave for another day but what I learned in all this is to pay attention to your health and take charge of it. Only you know how you feel and no doctor is going to fully understand when you try to explain it. Any pill you pop into your mouth may solve your main complaint but comes at a cost of creating more problems. I never even fill a prescription until I have read the information on it  and most important what side effects it can cause. You can pretty well figure that you will have a fifty-fifty chance of getting one or all of the side effects listed which can lead to more drugs or even death. Drug companies are in business to make money. The more drugs they can get you to take, the more money they make. If you think they care about you as a person and your quality of life I have a bridge I would like to sell.

After coming home from the emergency clinic with my arm in a sling and being told in a week to ten days to go see an orthopedist I spent days reading everything I could find on the Internet about a broken humerus and the pain killers I was given. I learned that where I broke my arm is pretty serious and that surgery with plates and screws really is not helpful because it will cause limited mobility and complications requiring more surgery. Surgery might seem to be the quickest way to recovery but will cause long term side effects. It was not particularly good news to read it can take six months to a year to heal on its own but that is the best way to go. They said it happened often in older people with more brittle bones but it can happen at any age if the fall or car accident or throwing a baseball wrong puts the right force on the wrong place. Shit happens no matter what age you are.

On the pain killers.  Since the last time I took some for some dental problems they have started to add Acetaminophen (Tylenol) to them.  The theory is that the opioid plus the acetaminophen helps stop the pain and reduces the milligrams of addictive pain killer per dose.  Nice thought but acetaminophen can cause unusual bleeding and bruising and dark colored urine leading to liver damage. Those side effects popped up a week into the pills and I really had to argue with the doctor to change the prescription. Always remember that doctors do not have time to study every drug and their side effects so you need to be well versed in what pills you are popping into your body. After the argument I got a low dose pain killer with the option to take Tylenol only if I needed it.  That cut the amount of acetaminophen down to one-third of the amount in the other pill. Side effects gone and pain amount okay.

When the day finally came for my appointment with the orthopedist I was really ready to see what exactly they were going to do. Of course I am very picky about doctors and had looked for the best.  We were told to arrive early and all the wrath that would befall us if we didn't. Got there fifteen minutes early and sat in the very busy waiting room for an hour and forty-five minutes.  Then back to an examining room for forty more minutes.  I was on the verge of tears and had decided to give someone ten more minutes before I walked out when a Resident finally walked in all cheerful. It was all I could do to keep from crying and I was a little rude.

They finally took x-rays at which time the doctor showed up. This is a large practise with lots of doctors and I just got which one they picked for me.  Who would believe I would end up with a young doctor named James Bond? Has to be a sign.  To my surprise he repeated everything I had researched and I feel confident that I am in good hands. The orders were to keep the shoulder immobilized in a sling, use the hand and elbow as much as possible, sleep sitting up and come back in a month.

                                              My New Bed

So I am getting pretty good at being left handed, still cook and clean, can type with one hand and can actually hold a paint brush and paint my art stuff with my right hand. Marshell is great at helping me do stuff like getting dressed, chopping up food and anything that takes two hands. After going over to the bank one morning to acquire just how "full service" they were and having one of the girls curl my hair I bought a curling brush that works great one-handed.  I even had to redesign the sling since the ones they sell are made for people who sit in chairs. My new ones in designer fabric do what they need to do for a person who hates to sit.  Shit happens but life is great. and I am sure my arm will heal good as new.

One of the main reasons I have written this story is because I am tired of hearing about how high medical costs are going to be as baby boomers turn sixty-five. Ninety percent of the ailments that come with the aging process are brought on by each of us in the way we eat, lack of exercise and taking medicine without knowing what they do to us.  Marshell will be seventy-four in July and I will be seventy in June but we take no prescription drugs, get lots of exercise and became vegetarians three years ago.  

Where dieting never worked for losing weight both of us have lost between thirty and forty pounds, Marshell's arthritis is pretty well gone except when he eats the foods that inflame his joints, my cholesterol dropped about a hundred points, blood pressure hangs around 120/65 and we feel fantastic.  We rarely get sick and I am sure my arm will heal as fast as someone half my age. Think about it - all it is a choice between feeling like you are thirty and taking charge of your life and health by making a few simple changes.

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer -

                                                                        PROM 1963

This week there has been a longer patch of spring-like weather.  The trees blossomed a few weeks ago but colder weather returned and made the blossoms on the trees disappear.  It is funny how you can walk outside some mornings and suddenly be reminded of a day from the past. Springtime when I was in school was always pretty special as it brought all the end-of-school activities like prom, graduation and the nearing of summer vacation.

Several years ago I was reprinting some pictures from high school at a local store.  There was a class reunion coming up and everyone was supposed to bring some.  I was working on the one posted at the top of this article when a friend came by to see what I was doing.  She made the remark that all the girls had waistlines! Guess it had not dawned on me that not only have clothing styles changed but also body shapes. Am I the only one that remembers that girls/women were supposed to have what was known as an hour-glass figure? Dresses were designed to show off a figure and no Prom outfit was complete without heels dyed to match the dress and hose.

The Prom picture was from the spring of 1963 and it was a pretty eventful one.  Paul and Joan had been married for almost two years and their son Don was beginning to walk and become a lot of fun. It was probably a bigger challenge to all the family involved when kids in high school get married than I realized at the time. Actually I think Joan's family and ours blended together pretty well considering two children were the only thing they had in common in the beginning.

Another thing we need to remember is that was the day of no cell phones and no answering machines. The only phone we had was a wall phone situated on the wall between the kitchen and the living room. I suppose that their were some teenagers who had Princess phones in their rooms. Not in the Hansen house.  I got to talk on the phone right in the middle of the whole family.

                                          

                                              

Muskogee had a beautiful country club. My parents were not members and I am quite sure that joining or participating in activities there ever entered their minds.  I had attended dances at the club and snuck into the swimming pool "after-hours" with Joan but had no knowledge of golf at all. Joan, however, had grown up across the street from the club, her parents were very active members and to top it all off her sister, Beth, was a championship golfer.  That spring the Ladies Professional Golf Association came to Muskogee for a tournament.

With my never ending quest to not miss out on anything I think I must have skipped a lot of school that week and spent the week hanging out at the golf course.  If I was a pest to Beth and the other golfers no one ever told me to go jump in a water hazard.  They were all actually very helpful in showing me how to hold a club and attempt to hit the ball. To 
this day I have to laugh when I see golfers riding around in golf carts as I was told the best thing you can do is to carry the clubs across your shoulders as it builds up the right muscles and helps your posture. As I write this I now wonder if they were jacking with me? So began the golf phase of my life.

Joan's dad dug thru the garage and came up with some of Beth's old clubs and a bag.  He must have been trying to get rid of a lot of clubs.  Who carries five woods, fourteen irons and three putters?  When I say carry, I did carry them as I was told to do.  Then, because there was no way my parents were going to join the country club, I started playing at the public course, Meadowbrook.

                                            Don and Beth

Meadowbrook Golf Club has been mentioned in these posts before but not as a place to play golf.  It consisted of a nine-hole golf course, a swimming pool and a huge building with a pro shop on the back, a bar and in past days, a restaurant and a huge but rather dingy space with a stage. It was in the huge open part with the stage where Muskogee teenagers danced to the rock and roll music of the Huff Band and other local groups.

The dances at Meadowbrook were probably one of the highlights of growing up in Muskogee during the fifties and sixties. I guess our parents thought they were chaperoned. I can remember the guy that ran the club might stick his head in from the bar on occasion and there was a three hundred pound rent-a-cop parked on a chair outside the door who collected money.  I am sure that there was a lot of under-age drinking going on and a few fistfights in the parking lot but I actually never paid any attention to any of that. I went there to dance, listen to the music and have a great time.

The end of the school year arrived and with the start of summer I got to begin my chance to play golf.  Still had my morning paper route so I sprang out of bed at 4:00 each morning, threw my papers and then off   to play golf by 6:00. I  usually beat the manager, Bob, out every morning but would go by the club house to pay when I was done. That may make me sound like some sort of a nut but I have always thought mornings were the best part of the day.  Meadowbrook did not have the best of fairways but it was so beautiful every morning when all you could hear were the birds singing. Also helped that no one else was out that early to see my attempts to learn a pretty difficult game.

They say practise makes  perfect.  A lot of the facts hiding in that statement include if you know what you are doing in the first place, if there is any natural ability and how much practise you want to do to achieve your goal. Can't say there was any natural ability but I was pretty determined to learn well enough to go out and play with some of my friends. Bob would come out in his golf cart every once in awhile to make sure I was okay and to give me a few pointers which was a big help.

Summer was starting out to be lots of fun. Over the course of a lifetime I have come to realize that having a lot of fun can be great or it can be a serious omen of things to come. 







' 

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - 11th Grade

When I started writing this blog almost a year ago I was determined to write one every week.  Guess life gets busy or complicated, moods go up and down but they have to be on the upswing for me to write.  Looking back on some of the slightly "off-subject" things I have posted - maybe life creates it little distractions.

So back to the subject at hand.  When I looked thru my vast amount of keepsakes from the 11th grade it became challenging to think of where to begin.  Reading all the things that other people wrote in my yearbook that year was a good start.  There were countless comments about how funny I was.  Interesting, I think back about me being shy, quiet and unpopular.  Then looking at pictures, report cards, play and debate things I began to realize that I must have been pretty involved in everything at school.  I have to admit that as I look back on all of it - I did mange to get involved in some pretty funny stuff.

                                                                    Junior Play

Muskogee Central High had a program called M Service.  If you did things like participate in debate or drama, was a homeroom officer or worked on the school paper, etc. you were awarded points and then received a little green M on graduation.  The opposite of M Service was a program called Office E's.  M's were good while E's were bad. Too many Office E's and you could not graduate.

Back in the day girls were only allowed to wear skirts or dresses to school.  Never shorts, jeans or tank tops.  Culottes were also a no-no.  One day I wore culottes to school.  My luck found me caught by the Dean of Women.  She loaded me in her car and took me home to change clothes.  Did I change into something approved?  No, I put on one of my Mother's skirts which came down to my ankles since Mother was a good deal taller than I.  The poor women went ballistic and sent me back into the house to change again.  Wow!  I racked up two Office E's within ten minutes.

What was I doing in the Law Club?  That one completely escapes me but I know I was by a picture from a courtroom visit with other members. 

 And what ever made me, the big city girl,  run for F.F.A. Sweetheart? If that wasn't strange in itself how about my method to win.  To become F.F.A. Sweetheart you had to raise money for the organization.  There was a Pie Supper but trust me, my parents were not going to pay hundreds of dollars for a pie.  So, it seems that my sister-in-law had a horse she needed to get rid of.  Did I actually spend several Saturdays downtown with the horse tied up to the clock in front of McEntee's Jewerly store selling raffle tickets on the horse? I guess there was not a huge demand for chances to win a horse and my parents only paid some piddly amount for a pie so I did not win. But I did get a dress for the crowning of the F.F.A. Sweetheart that would reappear several times during the rest of the year.

To be honest it is hard to write these stories with out using names of co-conspirators in  my shenigans.  Since I am still friends with many of my classmates and uncertain about whether they really would want me to spill the beans on them, I leave out the names.  Do not think for a minute that innocent, shy me thought up some of this stuff by myself. I am going admit here that my sister-in-law's name was not Mitzi. I used Mitzi because I have never known any one in my life named Mitzi.  Made sense to me that no one else had either.

Her real name was/is Joan.  Joan did her share of silly stuff like the night we sneaked into the country club for a late night swim and running up and down the roads in her VW convertible. I remember one day when Joan and I went to Warner to visit a family friend of hers and I came home with a dog.  No dog had been allowed in the Hansen house for ten years.  My Mother's reaction was "take that dog right back where you got it".  The next sentence out of her mouth was what kind of a dog is that?  It was a little Sheltie that became Mother's dog that very afternoon. 

 There was a Saturday when Joan and I  decided I should become a blond. Well, after the stripping process I had decided on a Champagne Beige Toner.  What color is champagne?  I don't think you can really describe it as beige - how about pink?  Remember the F.F.A Sweetheart dress?  Did I mention it was made of a fuschia (dark pink) chiffon?  It just so happened that the Saturday Joan and I decided to make me a blond was the very same Saturday that I was to be an usher in a play at the high school.  Have you guessed yet what I was wearing to this event?  In 1963 it was really not stylin' to have your hair match your dress and I must admit I got a lot of stares that night. I will also say that my Mother's face was the same color as my hair and dress from anger. 

Little brother Kenny got assigned to ride along in the car with me if I had to go to the "library" better known as the cruising places in town at night.  Perhaps he grew up a little too fast and I should have been watching him.  He went to a junior high school dance one night and was no where to be found when I went ot pick him up.  Long after everyone was gone I found him propped up against a tree extremely drunk. That was an interesting evening on the art of getting my fourteen year old brother home and in the house without the parents realizing he was drunk. Thankfully he got so sick that he never did that again.

With all the funny stuff that I managed to do in my Junior year there were actually classes to go to.  Looking at my report cards I looked like a pretty serious student with all A's and B's in classes like Chemistry, French, English and Geography.  The rest of the day was filled in with Debate, Homemaking and would you believe, Jr. Drama.  I was probably lucky that there were lots of speech tournaments and plays to be involved in to keep me out of trouble.

It is interesting to look back on that year as I can see some lifelong patterns that began to develop.  There were disappointments that I began to treat with humor and a competitive nature that began to emerge.  Sixteen going on seventeen is a pretty tough age to get thru.  
Growing up when all my classmates and I did was with out a doubt more fun than we realized at the time.

If I thought the Junior year was fun, it was nothing compared to the following summer and then our Senior year.