What a drag it is getting old, or at least that’s what Mick and Keith were telling us back when they were 23-year-olds who could have sex without purple pills or back braces. Whippersnappers!! What did they know?
 
In fact, getting old is a pretty terrific experience if you have the right perspective on the whole thing. Yes, it can be a bit disconcerting to realize that the only person ogling you is the Grim Reaper, but there are also daily highlights, if you know where to look. For instance….

1. It’s child’s play to embarrass your grown-up children by simply typing LOL or OMG on their social media feeds. This is so much easier than in the old days, when you actually had to show up and talk to them when they were with their friends.  
2. It’s easy to force your kids to take all your old stuff by simply bypassing them and giving everything to your grandkids. What four-year-old wouldn’t want a 1937 couch with slipcovers in their bedroom?
3. When you show up at 3:45 for the early bird dinner, nothing has been 86’d yet and most of the silverware is clean. And, on a good day, you might actually be one of the youngest people in the dining room.
4. There’s no need to join a health club or pay for an expensive trainer to stay in shape. Why bother when you can put in ten miles a day walking in and out of the kitchen as you forget why you’re there?
5. Speaking of forgetting things—weren’t we?—you can develop incredible online research skills as you try to find the name of that woman who costarred with that guy who fell out of a boat while they were filming that show that you liked back in, um, when was that?
6. You can entertain your grandkids and nap at the same time by encouraging them to draw lines on your back to connect your liver spots.
7. You’ll never get lonely because you can count on AARP to send you at least 20 co-branded offers each day. And if you respond to one of their ads for a walk-in tub, you’ll have visitors for months.
8. You finally have a good excuse for not losing any weight. Between enlarged prostates and constipation, your body is now a self-storage locker and, unlike your memory, nothing is getting lost.
9. Every day, someone will tell you how good you look. Yeah, they’ll always end the compliment by adding, “for your age,” but a win is a win.
10. People start calling you “young man” or “young lady.” Of course, they’re all 27 and they’re smirking when they do it, but again, a win is a win.
11. Osteoporosis turns out to have its upside as all the calcium in your body leaves your bones and resettles in your arteries. You jaws sag, your gut sags, your boobs drop to the floor, but at least one part of you is getting more solid!!

 
There’s so much more to get excited about as we age, but I’ve just had a senior moment and I can’t recall the details. As soon as I find my glasses, I’ll look for the, um, look for the, um, where am I?
 
 
Whatever you do, don’t forget to click here to subscribe to Dad Writes by just clicking here to subscribe to Dad Writes by clicking here before you forget.

 
 
 
 
 

You can tell a question is very, very old when it’s based on the idea of mailing a letter. Bear with me, though, because this quiz from the Pleistocene Epoch has an important lesson that you don’t want to miss. (Okay, I don’t want you to miss it, but why quibble?)
 
As this quiz begins, you want to mail a letter. The closest post office is a mile away and you drive there at 30 miles per hour. How fast do you have to drive back in order to average 60 miles per hour?
 
Don’t bother grabbing your calculator, because I’ll give you the answer: You can’t do it. If you drove to the post office at 30 miles an hour, you used up two minutes. And if you wanted to average 60 miles an hour for the whole trip, you would need two minutes. By the time you get there, you’re already too late.
 
Life is like that. Whether we’re saving for retirement, planning a business strategy or leaving the house to meet friends, the clock is ticking. Too often, we start on a journey that we cannot finish, relying on hope or kismet or time travel for our ultimate success. That means we’re just wasting our time on a project that’s doomed to failure, when we could be investing our energies in a more promising direction.
 
Frequently, when I’m working with a start-up company, the management team will dismiss the limits of time, but that can be a fatal error. One company I advised had adopted a strategy that wouldn’t pay off until several quarters after they ran out of money, which meant it wouldn’t pay off at all. In another case, the business founder had started so many initiatives that she needed a 27-hour day to get the job done, but only if she didn’t eat, sleep or shower.
 
We make the same mistake in our personal lives. We don’t start saving for retirement until we need to save 120% of our income to make it work. We plan to travel the world someday, but wait until we lack the stamina to make the journey. We start a hundred hobbies, but we never block out enough time to master any of them.
 
And let’s not forget the little matter of relationships. So often, we are caught up in something that’s toxic, a situation that cannot be fixed without investing more time and energy than we will ever have…if it can be fixed at all. Still, somehow, we pursue a goal we will never achieve, draining our lives of more productive and enjoyable endeavors.
 
Nobody makes their final departure with a clean desk. In fact, nobody should make that kind of exit, because a healthy mess and a large to-do list can be indicators of a life well lived. Still, it’s much better to leave a long to-do list of items we enjoy, not a queue of boulders we’re damned to roll up the hill.
 
Time is the original scarce resource, but we treat it like a bottomless pool. The only way to make more of it, at least in practice, is to cut the non-starters and the never-wills from our to-do lists. Today might be a good day to start.

 
How many impossible tasks can you remove from your to-do list, now that you know the secrets to time management? And how much time have you freed up to subscribe to our weekly posts by clicking here? Oodles. Win win. 

​We absolutely need a new word to replace “friend.” Several words, actually. Maybe hundreds. Somehow, we have about 500 words that refer to coitus and 275 for breasts and about 950 for men’s, um, lower brains, but we use the same term for a person we would die for as we apply to a bot on Facebook.
 
This is crazy. Every so often someone comes up with a modifier like friends with benefits, or bff, but mostly we use the word “friend” as a generic reference to any humanoid we have ever met, even if we know them only on social media. Or own them, as in “man’s best friend.”
 
I’ve always been very demanding of the word, which has led me to suggest that some people are acquaintances and not friends, but that always sounds like I’m rejecting them. And, based on my social skills, I’m not exactly in a position to reject anyone. 
 
Still, it seems like there should be different terms to describe different types of relationships. Does anyone have a really good word that describes someone…
 
…you’ve known for a long time, but see seldom, and yet it’s always like you’re just picking up on an ongoing conversation every time you get together?
 
…you’ve known for a long time and see all the time, but you can never seem to get past the weather and traffic before running out of things to talk about?
 
…you know from work, or the neighborhood, and you’re okay with them on a short elevator ride, but you could not survive lunch with them?
 
…you knew in high school, or college, and you have nothing you can talk about other than “remember that time back in school?”
 
…you know only through connections on Facebook or LinkedIn or some other site that refers to everyone as friends, even though you have never met them IRL and they might actually be a Russian troll or, worse, a blogger?
 
…who is a parent of your kids’ friends, so you socialize with them a little bit while the kids are at Little League or the school play, but you don’t spend time together otherwise?
 
The list grows as I slice and dice the weird relationships I’ve established over the years and try to figure out what to call them. Perhaps I should refer to them as “friend-ish” or “future friends” instead. “Future friends” sounds much more hopeful and it would give them something to strive for, but only if they earn it. Of course, if they knew I was waiting for them to earn it, they might decide it’s not worth the effort…and they’d be correct.
 
Maybe my definitions are too strict and I should simply adopt the standard of calling everyone a friend unless they are actually convicted of trying to kill me. Maybe it’s time I make the switch from my Damon and Pithias standard to a less demanding Damon and Affleck.
 
That might be the safest course, since specificity is a double-edged sword. What if I think someone is a friend I would die for and she thinks I am good for a short elevator ride? What if I consider some guy a great pal and he thinks I should be a third-level contact on LinkedIn? If we used more specific words, those differences would be revealed and somebody—probably I—would end up in tears.
 
Hmmmm. I think I am beginning to understand why we can have nearly 3,000 synonyms for “drunk” and only one for people we have met. Maybe it’s much better this way.
 
Of course, people who subscribe to Dad Writes are my closest and most deserving friends. Just click here and we will be the bestest BFFs forever.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

​On the way back to the airport, I had to pull over to the side of the road and cry for a while.
 
Jerry was dying. There was no doubt and there was no cure. I had flown to California to visit with him one last time, to let him know he had tipped the scales for the positive in this world, and that he would be missed. Through his contributions to my life, and to many others, he had earned this visit several times over.
 
Jerry had been a client for many years, and then he became a mentor and a friend. I hadn’t done any work with him or his company for years, and he had left the company as well, but this was a rare instance in which “business friend” is not an oxymoron. He always had an instructive story about business, about life and values, and he passed along a few jokes that I could claim as my own. He was a mensch.
 
On the night of our last visit, we acknowledged the obvious in about two minutes and then spent the rest of our time the way we always did, sharing stories and jokes and commiserating about the state of the world. All things considered, it was a very enjoyable evening. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want that evening to end, because that night’s goodbye would almost certainly be the last.
 
I’ve had many “last visits” since then; they become more frequent as you and your friends get older. Sometimes, you don’t know it’s your last visit when you have it, because nobody is aware of the fuse that’s burning. In those cases, you look back and wonder if you said the right things, if you left on good enough terms.
 
Often, though, you do know the reality when you come to visit, and you know you’re fulfilling an important mission. You’re letting somebody know they made a difference, they were appreciated, and they will be remembered as a positive force in the world.
 
My last visit with Jerry was relatively easy. He was alert and energetic, with few telltale signs of the traitors within his body. Other visits are much more challenging, such as those times you’re sitting with a friend who has lost her personhood while a machine sustains the metrics of existence.  All we can offer is a gift of normalcy, an episode of the life they had, and still have, if we can ignore the demands of their impatient companion.
 
Every so often, you go to a really great funeral. The guest of honor lived a long and productive life, all the guests knew and loved him, and the family is comforted by a constant stream of stories from a life well lived. It’s sad, as it must be, but it’s also joyous in a way, marking the completion of an honorable, meaningful journey.
 
Funerals are for the survivors, though, not the deceased. Last visits are for the guest of honor, a chance to celebrate their life in the present tense, to offer whatever solace can be delivered through a promise to remember. It isn’t really much, but sometimes it’s all we can give.

 
 
 
 
 

​We must apologize to all our readers in Chicagoland for last week’s post about Restaurant Week. The whole idea of RW is to encourage people to try out the hip and trendy restaurants we passed up during the rest of the year, which is a great idea. Unfortunately, it is so, so easy to get lost as we encounter unfamiliar phrases on those recyclable menus.
 
Sorry, sorry, sorry. For those of you who are still planning to try out a new café in week two of Restaurant Week (Weeks??), here are a few of the strange words that might assault your eyeballs:
 
Organic: Yes, it probably contains E-coli and salmonella, but at least it doesn’t have any preservatives that can make your boobs bigger.

Croque monsieur: A ham and cheese sandwich that costs an extra $3 because we gave it a French name. See: fromage, pomme frites and escargot.

Sous Vide: The same as a Seal-a-Meal. Of course, it’s in French, so you’ll pay $5 extra.

Fusion: Cultural appropriation that’s acceptable because the chef is trendy and the patrons think they’re woke.

Whole grain: We were too lazy to remove the sticks and pebbles.

Deconstructed: All the ingredients are there, but you have to assemble it yourself. It’s like IKEA, but with lettuce.

Cioppino: We threw some leftover seafood into a pot of tomato sauce.
 
Bouillabaisse: We threw some leftover seafood into a pot, but we forgot the tomato sauce. Still, it’s French, so you owe us an extra Hamilton.
 
Mediterranean diet: Anything from a country that borders the Mediterranean Sea is supposed to prolong our lives. Since Italy is on the Mediterranean, you should order a large sausage pizza.

Kale, ramp, quinoa, jicama, acai berries…: Any ingredient that you’ve never heard of before is a SUPERFOOD with incredible curative qualities, previously known only to people who reside in grass huts and live to the ripe old age of 27.

Eclectic: We had some leftovers from last week that we didn’t want to go to waste, so we put them on your cheeseburger.

Artisanal: We made this by hand, so we’re charging you extra for our bottle of Purell. 

Tartare: We forgot to cook it.
 
Carpaccio: We forgot to cook it.
 
Al dente: We remembered to cook it, but the pilot light went out before we finished.
 
Chef’s table: See your food prep up close and get a whiff of the cooks at the same time.
 
Locally sourced: There’s a roadside farm stand on Route 7.
 
Prix fixe: Includes oysters and ground rhinoceros horn at no extra charge.
 
Old World Recipe: Food that’s so awful (including offal) that your ancestors sat in steerage for two weeks so they would never have to eat it again. See: haggis, lutefisk, tripe, sweetbreads. (Also, it’s the real reason your grandparents smothered their yaya in 1937.)

If there’s something we missed here and you’re just dying to know what they’re peddling at your local diner, just let us know and we will provide the inside scoop. And be sure to try the veal!
 
Restaurant week lasts for a short time, but subscriptions to Dad Writes last forever. At least that will seem to be the case if you click here to subscribe to our weekly meanderings about life and other stuff.

​In honor of Restaurant Week in Chicago, we examine the curse of hummus, extremely confident servers, and the best beer to pair with peppermint ice cream. Clearly, I am in desperate need of a home-cooked meal…
 

1. American Exceptionalism: When you order the whole slab of ribs, because it’s only $5 extra and you can take home the leftovers, but then you persevere and finish the entire order. GBA.
2. The Greek Diner is a national treasure. And by national, I mean the United States. They don't have these places in Greece, which is why they have to eat hummus instead of patty melts.
3. There are only four basic food groups: hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries and pizza. Isn’t all of life so much clearer now that you understand its foundation?  
4. I’m always impressed when the restaurant tab is $11.25, I give the server a twenty and she asks me if I want change. Someday, I hope I can have that level of self-esteem.
5. Every so often, I’ll be sitting in a nice restaurant and a remarkably attractive woman will walk in with a gentleman who appears to be substantially older than she is, and she appears to find him incredibly interesting. I always wonder if he has an absolutely enormous, um, intellect.
6. If you haven't finished your beer when dessert arrives, so you wash down your peppermint ice cream with pale ale, have you achieved a new high or hit rock bottom? (Please, don't answer this question.)
7. More and more restaurants have unisex bathrooms these days, not because the owners changed the signs, but because people are using whichever room is available. I don’t care who was in there before me, as long as they are polite enough to leave the seat up.
8. Most waiters must suffer from ADD, which is why they come by 12 times in the first five minutes I’m at the table, but can't be found for 20 minutes when it's time to pay the bill.

 
So, if we were actually making any money from this blog, would all our restaurant meals be tax deductible as a “research” expense? Hmm…
 
Aren’t you getting weary from reading all these requests that you subscribe? Wouldn’t life be much better if you simply clicked here to sign up and you didn’t need to be distracted by these brazen appeals in the future?