I am one of the few Americans not concerned about the cost of gasoline because the eye doctor told me I should give up driving. What? Just because I can’t see the road?
What can an old guy like me do when he needs a bolt or some nails? Send his wife to the store? Nope. She can’t drive either.
Maybe I could buy a horse. You don’t need a license to ride a horse. I wonder if they took away a cowboy’s horse back in the Old West when the cowboy developed macular degeneration?
I quit driving about two years ago and my wife about a year ago and we depend on neighbors, our grown children unfortunate enough to live near us, and county transportation to get us to and from appointments.
We buy groceries in large amounts so we won’t run out of food, then run out anyway. It saddens us to look in the garage and not see any cars. But according to my wife, there’s more room for boxed Christmas decorations, the heaviest on the top shelves and the light ones on the bottom, of course.
Now that we’re walking “seniors,” Dorothy has fallen back on her favorite pastime, showing me where to move the heaviest rocks.
And now she plants stuff in big pots that seem heavier than they used to. She talked the grounds people into bringing in a big rock, which happily I have not yet had to move.
That’s because we gave away the crowbar, a gift from Dorothy’s Dad. It was a beauty, made from the drive shaft of some long-forgotten farm implement. It was heavier than most of the stuff we used it on.
When we’re not moving pots or begging someone to take us somewhere, we’re answering calls from the Philippine Islands or India, folks wanting to sell us health insurance.
It’s kind of confusing because other TV commercials urge us to sell our insurance policies for cash.
I can’t feel too sorry for myself about not driving, though.
As an anonymous ex-driver once said, “A car’s weakest part is the nut holding the steering wheel.”
Contact Ted at tblankenship218@gmail.com.
