Heather Menzies Jones
www.WriterHeather.com
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What Fresh Hell?

Berlin - March 8, 2018

 

I woke up last night – not unusual – I wake up many nights at two or three regardless of wine or coffee – I’ve heard that sleep is disrupted at my age – people joke about it, although it’s not so amusing when it’s dark and one’s mind churns. I try to remember my German lessons, which article, das, der, die – which one adheres to which noun. Then a name becomes stuck. I can’t remember someone’s name a name that would have at one point in the past tripped off my tongue but now it unglues itself and only hours or days later will it pop unbidden into my head and I think I’m coming down with my heritable brand of cognitive decline.

From yesterday’s (Sunday, May 7, 2017) NYT Style Section “No Grandma, You Are Not LOL,” Future Tense

From yesterday’s (Sunday, May 7, 2017) NYT Style Section “No Grandma, You Are Not LOL,” Future Tense – Teddy Wayne

1.     I’m reading the newspaper – emphasis on ‘paper’ so that automatically lets you know I am of a certain age. Then I see three pictures accompanying above article –septuagenarians all, Larry King, Cher, and the Donald – I’m not quite there yet, but habitual obituary reading (and a shout out to obit writers everywhere who include the decedent’s age) and seeing that the newly departed was, oh say, between 61 (my age) and 80 and my first response is, “Holy Crap! Cut down in the very prime of life. Much too young!”

2.     I settle in with a cup of coffee. Teddy Wayne’s observation is that old people who should conduct themselves with some measure of dignity are losing their shit online and committing emoji blunders, acronym absurdities and generally dating themselves by using current slang with Sean Spicer levels of tone deafness.

3.     Wayne refers to Dr. Krystine Batcho (65), a psychology professor who says: “Now we have this sense that even if you can’t live forever in your own physical state, you can pass on your legacy. One reason Facebook and social media have become so accepted is because of the promise, for better or worse, that it’ll be there forever. That’s our way of being immortalized.”

To my heirs – My Online Legacy

·       Youtube video of baby laughing every time dad tears a piece of paper

·       Brief clip: two adorable baby elephants lolling around in a children’s blow-up wading pool

·       Ten meal pics from a trip to Italy circa mid 2000s

·       Post of me standing next to a fellow marcher holding a sign reading “Power to the Pussies” - Washington, D.C., January 22, 2017

·       Share (14 likes, 3 comments) of Richard Reich’s Trump’s 7 Techniques to Control the Media

·       Grammatically sound texts – commas √, possessives √, appropriate capitalization √, terminating punctuation √

Lame, I realize. But, then again, it could all be worse – say, Anthony Weiner’s online gifts to the ages.

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