A costume isn't always a costume and doctors are never satisfied, or at least that's the zeitgeist for this week:

• My server was wearing all black, monster ears, and some kind of bat-like tiara, so I thought about complimenting her on her Halloween costume. Then I realized this might just be how she expresses herself all the time, so I’ll wait and see if she’s dressed the same way in November.
  
• Can we stop pretending that “customer service” bots are a way to reduce costs? The bots merely transfer costs from the provider to the customer, who needs to spend added time listening to prerecorded blather and yell “agent” 20 times until the bot gets the message. Getting rid of the human beings who answer the phone adds to the total cost of every business relationship and damages those relationships along the way.
• I haven’t listened to any new music for about 30 years now, which is making me worse and worse at both Jeopardy and the NYTimes crossword, but that’s the only place it makes any difference. Whenever I’m in an elevator or a grocery store or a doctor’s waiting room, I still feel au courant. It’s really the only time the world gives me a fist bump, but I’ll take it.
• Money’s been tight lately, but I’ve figured out how to keep seeing great shows at local theaters. I just sneak in as everyone is coming back from intermission and nobody checks for tickets before the second act. It’s working like a dream, but could someone explain to me what that Hamlet guy was so upset about?
• I’ve never had a doctor who thinks I’m doing okay with my routines. I say I’m eating fish twice a week and they tell me to make it three. I say I’m getting eight hours of sleep and they tell me to shoot for nine. Last week, I told my doctor I was exercising seven days a week and he told me to make it eight. To tell the truth, I don’t think they’re really listening.
  
• I was walking past the park the other night and I was jolted by the metallic sound of swings hinging back and forth. That’s the sound of nostalgia, now that the grandkids are too old for me to push them, and it recalled one more chapter that’s already closed. As if I needed a reminder: Don’t blink.
• We hardly need to remind you that today is the 100th anniversary of everything that happened on this date 100 years ago today. Be sure to honor the people who gave/did/fought/ran/overindulged on this day by observing it respectfully/happily/solemnly. And don’t forget, tomorrow it will happen again.
• The woman sitting next to me on the plane recommended a restaurant called Las Salivas, which seemed like an odd name to me, but what do I know? Maybe the food’s so good it makes you drool or something. Turns out, she was talking about Los Olivos and I should be sure to ask people to spell things in the future.

 
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I’ve got a seriously big week ahead, beginning with a day of mourning on Monday as the sun crosses the equator (really, it’s vice versa) and the darkness grows to nearly 15 hours at the winter solstice. I swore to myself that I’d get more enjoyment out of summer, which I did, and that I’d spend more time on the bike, which I did, but summer in Chicago is never long enough and our blue marble follows its own path, not mine.

That’s not the biggest challenge for this week, though, as Rosh Hashanah begins later the same day and I confront the greatest illusion in my life. The Jewish High Holidays are always a period of meaningful introspection for me and I’ve been focusing lately on the false belief I share with almost every other person on this planet.

Control.

Somehow, despite all the evidence life throws at us, we have a (Oxymoron Alert!!) seriously goofy habit of thinking we have some control over our existence. It would be a mistake to say we have no control at all, of course. We get to choose whether we have sausage or mushrooms, or both, on our pizza. We get to choose between boxers and briefs. We even get the pick the excuse we’ll use when we tell mom we can’t help her clean out the garage next weekend.

That’s small potatoes, though. When it comes to the big things in life, we reach our limits very, very quickly. We don’t control our health or our smarts or our height or who will hire us or whether our subway train will stay on the rails. We can’t make our rideshare show up on time or ensure that our pizza arrives with the toppings we ordered.

A major message of the Days of Awe, the period between the start of Rosh Hashanah and the end of the Day of Atonement on Yom Kippur, is that we have no control. At this time last year, we had no idea whether we would live to see today and, as Yom Kippur comes to a close, we will have no idea whether we will make it to the next Days of Awe.

The whole process is belittling and liberating at the same time. We spend our lives obsessing over things we cannot control, getting angry or stressed or impatient with people or events that we cannot even influence. Sometimes, we feel responsible when things go wrong, as if we really could have made the difference, or take unearned credit for successes we didn’t really create. Freed from that conceit, we can focus on the only thing we do control, which is our own actions.

I agree with Louis Pasteur that chance favors the prepared mind, and I’m a big fan of planning ahead, but that doesn’t mean I think I can control much of anything. Almost the opposite. Preparation makes it easier to make good decisions when, inevitably, things don’t go as planned. If I had more control, I wouldn’t need as much planning, but I don’t, so I do.

After the High Holidays, I’ll keep on making plans, if only to give God a good laugh. I’ll also try to keep both my stress and hubris in check by remembering control is an illusion.
 
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So, when you meet someone who has been sick for a long time, should you ask them how they’re feeling?

At first, this looks like a no-brainer. Of course, you do. What kind of lowlife, inconsiderate, uncaring, ice-in-the-veins mass of worthless protoplasm wouldn’t ask a sick person about their health?

This one.

Yeah, if they just came home from the hospital or they just had some procedure done, I’ll ask about it right away. But, if they have a chronic condition, it’s not going to be one of my top five conversation starters. I’ll probably get to it eventually, but I’ll do them the favor of ignoring the issue as much as I can. If it's fatal, I'll make an effort not to talk about it at all.

Maybe, people who are chronically ill get tired of the questions. Maybe, they’re sick of being sick and want to change the subject. Maybe they want to be seen as more than their malady. Maybe, they want someone to ask them if they’ve been any place interesting lately or whether they saw that new show on Hulu or if they think the Bears will get into the Super Bowl. (Bears/Super Bowl questions are always good for a laugh.) Just maybe, they’re tired of talking about their illness and they’re damned tired of having it define them.

I’ve actually asked a couple of chronically ill people who say they hate being treated like avatars of disease, and I understand the conflict in their lives. Any chronic condition is what we have, but it isn’t who we are. The topic will come up If the conversation goes on long enough, but we don’t have to dive into it like it’s our secret handshake.

I’ve seen people wearing T-shirts that say things like, “Ask me about my grandchild,” or “Don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee,” but I’ve never seen one that says, “Ask me about my goiter.” Maybe there’s a reason for that.

We all want to be seen as complete human beings who have layers, just like ogres. We want to talk about the things that interest us and excite us and trigger our pheromones. No matter what challenges we’re dealing with, we have days when we just want to forget about it and have a normal life.

The funny thing is, the standard opener for pretty much all of us is, “How are you doing?” Almost always, that’s a vague question that can simply trigger whatever is top of mind. But when we know a person isn’t doing well at all, another opening might be preferable. IMO.
 
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I told my daughters I want their children to get hurt and they agreed that it's a good idea.

TBH, I was expecting some push-back, maybe even indignation at the suggestion. What kind of monster looks at the most vulnerable in his family and wishes them pain? Instead, I found out they had been thinking along the same lines. And that was very gratifying, because it makes them thoughtful parents.

We all want to give our children the security and confidence that enables them to grow without fear. We work to protect them from negative experiences, even to the point of insulating them from the fact that those experiences exist. We know it won’t last forever. Reality will intervene. No matter what kind of cocoon we wrap around them, they will eventually graduate into a real world where parental force fields dissolve.

We want them to be carefree and happy and enjoy life like kids, but they also have to learn to be street smart in a way that requires them getting knocked down a few times. The more they interact with the world on their own, with no blocking and tackling from the guardians in their lives, the more likely and more frequent the beat-downs will be.

One day, they’re holding your hand as they cross the street and they don’t have to think about their own safety and, if you blink, you’ll find them maneuvering through rush-hour traffic on a Divvy bike. Suddenly, safety requires that they keep their heads on a swivel, along with the painful awareness that they can’t trust everything that gets said or the people who say it.

Some of life’s most valuable lessons come in only two sizes: bad and worse. The kids can’t mature into fully-capable adults without those lessons, so I’m rooting for the bad ones. I want them to learn about life the hard way, but not too hard. I want them to get bumped, but not bruised; hurt, but not damaged; wary, but not cynical. We need to step back and let them fall, but not so hard they can’t get back up and carry the lessons they’ve learned into a happy future. Or, so we hope.

As parents, as humans, we can never hit the balance point precisely, but it’s a worthy target. It’s also the hardest dance we need to master in life, with too many intrusions, too many variables, too much of the real world outside our door. The kids in my universe are aging into the danger zone, and the best I can hope for is that they only get hurt.

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The light turned green on Pulaski, but I couldn’t get through the intersection while an old woman was struggling to pull her overloaded wagon across the street. She was moving a half mile an hour, maybe less, pulling on the handle and advancing about a foot with every yank.

It was painful to watch, but I was on the hunt for an available men’s room at the moment and I couldn’t be distracted from my mission. Ten minutes later, I’m back in the car, driving down Foster, and I see that she’s gained about 200 feet.

I park the car, grab a can of oil from my bike bag, and walk over to ask her if she needs help. She accepts right away, of course, so I oil the axles on her cart and give it a pull. The thing is overloaded with about 50 pounds of groceries and the wheels are ridiculously small, so the whole thing is absolutely too much for her to handle, except she has no choice.

She tells me she does this once a month, and I guess that’s when the SNAP benefits come in for her family. She says she has four kids and the food has to last until another month rolls around, so I start doing the math.

At 50 pounds in the cart for her and four kids, that’s roughly five ounces per person per day. Even if everyone is on a diet of lard, that’s only 1,500 calories per day for each of them. Not quite starvation, but nowhere near ample, either.

Now that I’m yoked to the wagon, her gait improves, but she’s still a bit unstable and I notice that she has that crook in her arm that you often see with stroke victims. I think about asking, but then I figure I’m not gonna be here that long and she doesn’t owe me the story of her life. As we cross over the bridge, I’m thinking about giving her some money when we finish. I’ve got about sixty bucks on me and I can spare it, but it would probably mean a lot to her.

But, then, we get to her apartment building and there’s a man outside. Grown man, nice mustache, smoking a cigarette, and he starts going through the cart as soon as we get to her walkway. Maybe he’s one of the four kids she was talking about. Maybe he’s her boyfriend or husband or something.

Whoever he is, he absolutely looks like he could have pulled the damned wagon from the grocery store.
I think of asking him why he let her struggle with the load on her own, but I don’t know their household situation. Maybe he has some hidden deficiency that makes it impossible for him to help. Maybe he got home after she left and he didn’t realize she was trying to do it all on her own. Or, maybe, he’s just a bastard who expects her to do all the work while he stands outside in the sun, smoking a cigarette. I’d go with option C, but maybe I’m just cynical about these things.

I decide to let it lie, and I also decide to keep my sixty bucks for another day. Whatever the situation is, I’m absolutely not buying this guy a pack of smokes. The woman thanks me for my help, the guy says nothing, and I head back to the car.

Life in the city. You can’t beat it.

 
If you’re over 50, you’re probably hooked already and headed for the hard stuff, plus…

• Ra Ra Ra. When I was younger, I spent a few months practicing paganism, but it was just idol curiosity.
• Fun guy. I don’t mean to brag, but my podiatrist says that, even at my advanced age, I still have the feet of an athlete.
• Reality bites. I went for a walk one night and the whole area was suddenly alive with fireflies. I decided to repeat the experience the next night, but all I got for my troubles was a half dozen mosquito bites. Mother Nature is such a bitch.
• Gateway glass. Prescription lenses are like heroin. First, your vision is a little blurry, but you figure out how to make out the words by standing on your head and squinting. Then you figure, why not try out the cheaters, get a bit of an edge, just for a while. Then one of your “friends” suggests you try the hard stuff, the kind you can only get with an Rx, and now you can’t even find the front door without a visual crutch. Just say no, people! Just say no.
• Applause that refreshes. I really like positive reinforcement, so I’m thinking of going on stage. I won’t be performing or speaking or anything, just walking on random stages at local theaters whenever I get a chance. Audiences applaud you before you even say a word, so I can walk out, soak up the applause, and leave before anyone realizes I’m not part of the show.
• Wrong answer. I logged onto one or my websites and the usual questions popped up about cookies, so I clicked on “reject all” and now the site didn’t work. Then I got back on and clicked "accept all" and got thrown off again. Maybe I need to phone a friend. 
  
• Text me the answer. There’s a woman with her three children, or kids I presume to be her children, selling candy on the corner. Then I notice that she’s on her cell phone, two of her kids are on their cell phones, and the third kid is on his tablet. I decide to move on, looking for someone…what? More deserving? More financially sensible?  Better at marketing? Life in the city is filled with conundrums.
  
• Playing hard to get. I spent some time trying to build an audience on a new portal and I received a ton of likes, but almost no followers. I signed off for a couple of weeks and, when I logged back on, I had picked up a new audience. Clearly, the secret to success on social media is to not go there.