seventeen or eighteen

 

It's frustrating is what it is, quite frustrating, not that I'm trying to keep advised, or let some imaginary readership know, how it is being ninety years old; at least how it is and is becoming for me. 

For long adult years my favorite read to pick up as I boarded an airplane, or at the airport newsstand before boarding, was The New Yorker - - not only good writing and basic good entertainment, but enough to hold my attention throughout any flight from anyplace to anywhere. Every page, every article, every essay; and the weekly features - - Tables for Two, Fiction, the cartoons. I never worked the crossword puzzles, Linda's the crossword person, I'm not.

And also The Atlantic Monthly, now just The Atlantic. 

All of both of them, and nowadays with the email and the internet much more than's in either's print version arriving daily and weekly online. 

But I'm wandering, which is one of my invisible habits that I might like to shake and be shed of. Where I was going was the nonagenarian frustration: can no longer enjoy my magazines or read a book because of the lower lid eyelashes folding inward into my right eye -> as the eyes move back and forth reading, and especially looking down, but anyway and regardless, the right eye gets scraped, making fast, effortless, enjoyable reading at conversational speed impossible. The January 19, 2026 issue of The New Yorker is on my table here, I picked it up determined to at least read Helen Rosner's "Tables for Two," this week about the Jamaican patty in NYC, and I had to hold it up an inch from my eyes, and read one word at a time, constantly stopping to favor the word by word discomfort in my right eye.

On the plus side, I can still read on the computer screen in front of me, half-a-yard distant from my face, so as the printed magazine subscriptions run out I may try the online only editions, eh?

But I'm talking about the vagaries of nonavgenarianism.

Another is getting up mornings dizzy and confused and nauseous, as today. First the trip down the hall, turning on my coffeepot on my way, so the coffee's ready when I get back, if I remembered to make the coffee last evening before bed. Opening my computer or cellphone to check news and the weather, but having to stop and remember what I'm doing, and which keys to touch to get me there.

Eating the slightest breakfast type food with my coffee and having the PPHT send me back to bed for an hour or two nap before my morning's hardly even started. 

Get the message?

Opening my computer to play one of my favorite card games of Solitaire and being so confused by what shows up on the computer screen that I can't even make the first play. In fact, getting a game up as a test for myself to see how I am today, nomesane? 

What would I like? Well, to be seventeen, or forty. Maybe eighteen, where I was no longer under my father's control, though he didn't realize it yet, yeah that's it. The new self-ownership that dawned as my parents said goodbye and I watched them drive away, leaving me standing alone in front of North Hall, the freshman men's dorm. 

Actually I'd be afraid to go back there, because sure as Hell I'd do something different, take some other diverging road in the yellow wood, and not end up here this morning, whining about being ninety.

++++++y

Friends just moved to NYC for a semester at university, they're living in Manhattan. I once was offered a job in Brooklyn but turned it down for many reasons. If I'd taken the job I probably would never have been willing to move away from NYC as I moved along with life. If I were to move there temporarily today, I'd buy an online subscription to The New Yorker and make sure I tried out all the eating places that Helen Posner writes about. I'd make sure my apartment was walking distance to Katz's Deli, and for lunch today I'd have a Jamaican patty, probably a chicken curry one.

As it is, we're actually having chicken curry on rice for lunch today, so I'm good. And so is Life Itself, notwithstanding grouchy Bubba.

RSF&PTL

T90

pic from Mike again: Jitney Jungle in PC years ago. I don't remember it, but AI says the first one was at the corner of Harrison Avenue and 7th Street. Just thinking, that almost had to be the northwest corner? IDK, my real interest is the cars in the parking lot, I'll ID them another day, starting with what appears to be a 1952, 53, or 54 Lincoln. 

Who remembers where that Jitney Jungle was located?