I often look through past commentaries to make sure I’m not repeating myself— not just the topics but the wording as well. I’ll write something and it seems too familiar. Am I repeating myself? Lots of people repeat themselves in conversations— telling the same jokes, making the same points— so it’s logical that writers occasionally do the same thing. This time I thought I might purposely repeat myself, with random observations from columns and blogs written over the span of a couple of decades.

How about how the meaning of popular music lyrics change over the years…

You know when I first heard Jim Morrison sing, ‘C’mon, baby, light my fire,” I knew what he was saying. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Now when I hear it, I’m thinking it is getting a bit chilly and I should tell my wife to turn up the thermostat the next time she walks by.

On some of the euphemisms we use the avoid the painful reality of getting old…

When I first started hearing the word “seniors” being used to describe the elderly, I cringed a bit. As a newspaper guy, I saw the confusion in headlines and articles that come out of this. After all, seniors are also students in their last year of high school or college. If you were an elderly person who returned to college to collect a degree, you could literally be called a “senior senior.”

Then there is that magic elixir that supposedly keeps men perpetually young…

Once again, it’s the guys who have been fooled into believing that they can stave off old age, and the elixir flowing from the modern fountain is manufactured testosterone. According to Men’s Journal approximately 5.6 million American men are taking testosterone in some form, whether as a supplement or through more expansive (and expensive) testosterone therapy. If you are a male in his forties, fifties and beyond, you have probably been tempted into believing that your expanding gut, dwindling energy and deteriorating muscle may all be remedied by testosterone. “Low-T” has become the greatest gimmick in marketing and the force behind a multi-billion-dollar industry.

And while we’re on the subject of aging…

I’m no statistician, but facts are facts. Oh, yes they are. The average American of this decade is living about 76 years compared to the age of 47 back in 1900, and we’re living even longer. No wonder the traditional image of a grandfather was a creaky, white-haired guy in a frayed sweater to ward off the chill. And he was only 47! Fewer people made it to adulthood with any grandparents still alive back in the early 1900’s. It is also quite common nowadays for women to delay entering the ranks of motherhood until they are in their forties, resulting in more 70-year-old granddads struggling to play catch with their ten-year-old grandsons..

And then there is the explosion of chrome domes among us…

I’ve been bald for some 25 years now (2023 update: 35), and there weren’t many guys shaving their heads back then. People are used to it now. Little kids don’t give me a second glance nowadays, but my hairless pate drew a lot of attention back in the late eighties. Children stared at me. Some seemed downright frightened. People called me Kojak and Mr. Clean and, of course, Curly. Others would avert their eyes when I passed, claiming the glare was too much for them.

With so much more information at our command, shouldn’t we be wiser than previous generations?

Unfortunately, I have lapsed into that same malaise that plagues most of us in the age of the internet and easy access to any information you require at a particular time. I am dealing with more information than ever, but at the same time I know that information is not knowledge. The bulk of information that comes my way on a given day has no value when it comes to enriching my mind. Most of the stuff that invades my brain—and yours too, I’m sure—more closely resembles junk food than healthy sustenance. Knowledge requires time and effort to digest information and apply it intelligently.

Then there was a compendium of overused words and phrases that annoyed me in 2016, a particularly annoying year. A handful of them follow…

  • “Back in the day”— Whose day? Your day? Our day? This expression has had its day.
  • “Don’t go there!”— Just another way of saying you don’t want to talk about something and often used jokingly. Why do I want this expression banished? Don’t go there!
  • “Iconic”— Everything is iconic now. Watch the evening news and the anchor or a correspondent is sure to describe someone or something as iconic. You must be an icon to be iconic, and an icon is a visual representation of something like those symbols on your computer desktop. So if Bill Gates is an icon, he’s not really Bill Gates. (Definition change: the 21st Century synonyms of iconic now include “famous.”)
  • “Incentivize” — Another verb created from a noun, incentive, just because it sounds like you’re doing something important.
  • “Feedback” — I wonder why so many of us are looking for “feedback” instead of what it really is— information or a response. When something is drawback, it is self-explanatory. Same with a comeback. Feedback is an annoying noise that comes out of a speaker, especially someone who asks for it as a business meeting.
  • “My bad.”— Oops, I made a mistake. “I’m sure that coffee stain will come out of your white carpet” —OR— “I guess the safety of my shotgun should have been on. I’m sure that red stain will come out of your carpet.”

Finally, a rumination about opinions and beliefs which I’ve had the good fortune of expressing in newspaper columns or blogs for a long time…

Opinions are said to be shared, but too often they are delivered with no expectation of a response. Our opinions, of course, are the products of years of educating ourselves and observing human nature. Sometimes we forget that others shape their opinions accordingly. Listening to the opinions of others is a means of respecting them and the life they have lived. If that opinion becomes angry and abusive, it becomes a verbal assault, rather than opinion, and gives us the right to stop listening and respecting.