The Final Peril

We are all born. Most go on from there to live life. We laugh, cry, love, despair, learn, explore, succeed, fail and go on to experience life in our own unique way.  What is not unique, is that we all have a beginning and an end. We are all born. And we all die.

The subject of dying is not something most people want to talk about. It's in the back of our mind and we know we will die someday but we usually don't spend too much time pondering how and when it will happen. Death will be different for everyone. And no one can really tell you what it was like, not really. Not if they were pronounced dead and stayed that way.

Yes, this is an uncomfortable subject. But I'm bringing it up and putting it here because I was told one year ago told my time has come.. "You have some time. Maybe two to four years." You never really know how you will feel when you find out you have a terminal illness. Until you do.

After surgery, radiation and medications to fight breast cancer, it appears my annual examination revealed it had metastasized into the nodes between my lungs. Not a good thing. So what is it like when someone tells you your life will soon come to an end? Let me tell you what it's like, since now I know.

What struck me the most? It became very clear what is truly important to me. I mean what's REALLY important. It's not that I never lost the weight I wanted to lose. Or that I haven't seen Machu Pichu yet. Or that I never did meet my soul mate.

The most important thing to me is my 35-year-old daughter and her 6-year-old son. All of a sudden I realized I will only have a short glimpse into their future. The prospect of only seeing my grandson grow to be eight or ten years old was so difficult to accept. What is he going to be when he grows up? Is he going to stay as sweet and compassionate as he is now? Will my daughter have a full and happy life with love around her? Who is going to comfort her when life's certain crises arise? Will there be more babies for her? The questions in my mind were endless.

My primary emotional pain was related to what I would miss after passing..Until I realized something else. This would be the first major loss and emotional crisis for my grandson. I was going to be the cause of great emotional pain to him. This was painful to think about. My mission at that point became preparing him for this loss and trying to prepare him for it by minimizing it as best as I could.

I know my relationship with him is very special; he was born three months early on my own mother's birthday. Due to that, I always have felt that a piece of her is within him. I am so fortunate to have this little boy in my life who gives me so much love, appreciation and wonder. My life did not include a romantic soul mate but the incredible connection I feel with him more than makes up for this.  Maybe he intuitively felt something was wrong or perhaps he overheard other people talking about it. Whatever the case, one day he came to me and said "Grandma, I don't want you to die."

This was my opportunity to begin to ease his inevitable loss. I said "Honey, everyone will die someday. But I promise I will do everything I can to be here as long as I can. And after that, my love will be connected to your heart and you can take it with you wherever you go."

We have talked and talked about this through the months. I often ask him if he felt my love tugging on his heart while we were separated. Usually he says he felt it, sometimes not, but I am able to tell him my love was tugging whether he felt it or not. This has been a wonderful tool to remind him I am always there and always will be. It really does seem to comfort him.

Seven months after being told my prognosis, I prepared for surgery to biopsy one of the affected nodes just to be sure. Two previous attempts through the esophagus and the trachea had been unsuccessful. It's amazing how time-consuming it is to maneuver through insurance authorizations, consultations, and scheduling of appointments/surgeries actually takes. Seven months. Wow.

Since it had been so long, they agreed to perform another scan to visualize the affected nodes and have a good plan of action to enter my chest surgically at the least invasive spot. Many people had been praying for me and I was doing everything I could holistically to fight this cancer. Whatever the cause, miraculously there were no nodes found on the scan. We repeated it once more. Gone... no malignant nodes.

So now I know how I will feel when I am told I am dying. And maybe I'll get to see my grandson graduate high school. It's also nice to have my funeral arrangements made and prepaid. So it turns out it was quite a productive experience. 

How lucky I feel to have had this lesson to teach me what is truly important. I don't know how much time I have to instill in those I love how important they are to me, especially my little precious grandson. But I know that I will pay attention much more closely to making sure I have done the best I can to prepare them all for that time. And I will not forget to cherish each and every moment I have with them.

Oh, yeah.  And I get to see Machu Pichu in two months!  :)

The ADBC's of Life

This blog came into being because I knew I needed to write my lessons down.  Some people say my life has thrown me some hard punches.  In comparison to many of their lives, I can see how they may think that.  But you have to remember one thing.  Most of us only remember this ONE life.  If you grew up in central Africa and lived in a hut, someone bringing you a basket of oranges from Florida may be a memory you cherish forever.  If you live in Florida and someone brings you a basket of oranges, although grateful and happy to eat them and share them, it wouldn't have the same impact.  

My point here is that everything is relative.  I have no clue what aging without a brain tumor would be like.  Since the age of 44, I have forgotten things (to an excessive degree), become confused, been impulsive, overwhelmed by stimuli, etc.  For some people, this is a gradual process as they age.  This is life for me and it is all I know.  To be honest, it doesn't seem bad to me, it just is.  The silver lining inside this cloud is that I have the greatest inner peace I have ever felt.  For this reason, I continue to write this blog as I try to understand, even for myself, why my inner contentment has become so much more than before.

Approximately five years ago, I was honored by a request to create a puzzle piece for a brain tumor awareness display.  Similar to the AIDS quilt, patients were given the opportunity to create a puzzle piece which described their journey thus far as a brain tumor patient/survivor.

This was the first time I actually sat down and gave serious thought to my brain tumor experience to such a degree.  To put something into a visual description caused me to have to think about my experience in a very different way.  I found the whole experience of creating this piece to be very therapeutic and also very enlightening to me about my own experience.

I wish I had clearer pictures of the puzzle piece but the only picture I have is shown here.  Being a Taurus, of course, mine is very colorful!  

Starting at the top left corner, you can see smooth, silky, lavender material, casually draped.  That represents my life before the brain tumor.  

The black line that crosses over the puzzle piece is the road of my life.  It was a bumpy texture and made it's way across the whole puzzle piece.

At the right edge of the silky section is a turquoise, sparkly, sharp lightening bolt. This represents the actual moment my life changed.  It is a line that delineates the silky lavender from the other side.  You may also notice that pieces of this lightening bolt follow me along the road of life.  The seizures and episodes of exasperation and frustration when I attempt to do something I could do before are represented by the continuation of that bolt.

Words are scattered through the lavender silk.  Words like career, job security, educational goals, college, marriage, children, etc.  An organized and correct line of letters scatter across the silk - A B C D E F G H I and then slam into the lightening bolt.  After the bolt, they are jumbled, disorganized and very difficult to understand.  Words like fear, confusion, "what is normal", doctors, prognosis, etc. are scattered over the non-homogenous, dull sandy color of the right side of the lightening bolt.  But also, surprisingly enough, are words like grateful, lucky, appreciative, calm.  In fact, a picture of the Buddha is on this side.

Through creating this puzzle piece I realized something profound, at least to me. One thing was for sure, forever my life would be divided into two parts.  The before and the after.  BC and AD.  Now and then.  Me and her.  I found it ironic that if you line up BC and AD, you have a sort of fumbled alphabet.  But without the crisis, I don't know if I could have appreciated the calm.  If my life were always calm, I wouldn't appreciate the basket of oranges.  I wouldn't feel tears behind my lids when I think about how lucky I am to know and spend time with my grandson.  To be able to see my teenage daughter grow into a beautiful woman. I wouldn't have the perspective to appreciate every step I take and every word I am able to utter.  

My heart hurts for the puzzle piece to the left.  This person has written "Let me out."  Although you can feel imprisoned in your own mind when so little around you makes sense initially, it does provide an opportunity to actually examine the inside world of yourself.  To accept different abilities and different limitations and set a new set of expectations for yourself.  I so hope the creator of this piece has found happiness in his/her new reality.

What my puzzle piece doesn't show, I did not yet know.  At the far right of the puzzle piece should be a silk worm in a cocoon. The simplest form of smooth silk.  Broken down to its true nature.  No more complexity, simplicity is the core of my thoughts.  Some say I have survived.  I like to think I have arrived.  

Your Neighbor's Coworker's Cousin's Boss's Wife's Uncle

The older I get, the more I seem to form opinions about my observations.  Maybe this is true for most people, I'm not sure.  But I felt like documenting this today.

Since moving about 30 miles north of where I used to live, I finally found a Buddhist 'Sangha' or what you could call a like-minded community of spiritual seekers who are interested in Buddhist teachings.  One of the many things that drew me to Buddhism was the non-judgemental nature of the religion or, more accurately to me, the philosophy.  It is the first 'religion' I have experienced where no claims are made to the rightness of Buddhism as opposed to other religions.  Buddhism is Buddhism, take it or leave it.  Or take some of it and leave the rest.  Anyway, this week we spoke about how we found this particular path.  Because of these testimonials, I have found myself thinking a lot about judgementalism.  As I drove down the road today, a thought came to mind.

Let's say your neighbor was speaking with you about a coworker whose cousin worked for a man whose wife had an uncle who was amazing.  This man helped people find cures for their illnesses, donated money to charities, volunteered at homeless shelters, and spent every minute of the day trying to do good deeds and help people be happy.

Now you may not know your neighbor's coworker.  Or her cousin.  Or her boss or his wife.  And you may not even know this kind uncle.  But, I imagine you would have good feelings about a person who was so dedicated to doing kind things.  Even without knowing this person, you would have to have some level of respect for the type of person he seemed to be according to what you heard.

Why is it that when some people hear of another's beliefs, even if they are based in kindness, it is so often judged as 'wrong' or 'a mistaken path' or that the person is seeking answers in the wrong places?  Why can't we just see the positive aspects of each religion and appreciate the goodness in each?  Why, if someone isn't a practicing Christian, do so many people need to vocalize their opinions about the error of their ways?  Aside from someone worshiping evil, there are so many beautiful concepts in so many different religions.

I like to think of this spiritual variety as a sort of "spiritual buffet" served on a bed of beautiful, leafy greens.  On one bed of greens, you have Baptist teachings.  On another, you have Catholic catechism.  On another, Wiccan.  So many to pick from on down the line through Buddhism, Judaiism, Hinduism, Taoism, etcetera, etcetera.   Even at a dinner buffet, not everyone chooses the same things to eat.  Each has different needs, concepts, limits of understanding, personal history.  But everyone benefits from eating.

The interesting thing about this spiritual buffet is that the most important part of the buffet is the foundation of it.  The beautiful, leafy greens.  Full of nutrients and benefits, the greens are the 'love' of the buffet.  The foundation of all the religions, you will find, is the same.  Love each other.  Be kind to each other.  Treat others with respect.  Think kind thoughts, say kind things, do kind deeds, help your fellow man.

So even though we all look different and sound different, we all know what we need to do.  We need to be kind to each other, compassionate and true.  It's as easy as that.  It doesn't really matter what you call it.

Many great people in history told us just that.  Abraham, Jesus, Buddha, Moses, and more.  Maybe if we paid more attention to the similarities of our varying beliefs instead of the differences, we would find more peace and realize we have more in common than we think.

The Color Blue

Blue has always been my favorite color.  Everybody knows the color blue, right?   Not really. 

If someone were visually impaired or blind since birth, they may have no clue what color is at all, never mind the actual color of blue.  And, for all we know, what one person sees as blue could be another person’s red.  When we learned our colors from our parents and teachers, they pointed to a color and said "this is blue."  Whatever color you saw at the area they pointed to is now known to you as "blue."  Maybe, what I see as yellow you call blue.  Perhaps our brains don't interpret these color impulses the same and you have a totally different color-scape than I do with colors I wouldn’t even recognize.  

I suppose there is no way to know for sure without being able to sync our brains perceptions and see through another's eyes.  And that's not something we will likely be able to do any time soon.

But, what if we just try to describe it.  The color blue. To describe a color without using color as a point of reference is impossible.  "It's blue, like the sky!"  Well, if you can't see the sky, that description would not be at all helpful.  

Trying to explain something to someone requires a common point of reference to base your explanation on.   Without that, we cannot communicate a thought, idea or situation. Can a color be described to someone who cannot see,  an aroma to someone who cannot smell or a sound to someone who cannot hear?

Which (finally!) brings me to my point.  There is no way to explain what having a brain injury is like to someone who does not have a brain injury.   The only people who truly understand are the ones who live with it themselves.  The “insiders”.

As hard as our friends, family and significant others try, they will never truly be able to understand.  To them, it is something that happens at certain events or places or while trying to do something in particular.  To us, it never goes away.  We take it with us wherever we go.  We don't forget it because it is part of us.  It is a reality that we become 'accustomed' to or learn to accept.  

This is not a pity party.  For me, it is a brain injury; for someone else, it is being a quadriplegic, someone else, losing a child -- everyone has, as they say, a torch to bear.  As much as we want to empathize and understand what others are going through, we have to accept the limitations of our abilities to do so. 

I believe accepting the fact that people can not completely understand is critical for true acceptance of our situation, whatever that may be.  For me, it is time to stop trying to explain .  Time to let go of the frustration that arises by the repeated unsuccessful attempts to explain why I behave the way I do, why I need certain modifications to my environment and why I react the way I do. 

This realization is very new to me.  I am sharing it for others in the same or similar situation because I truly believe this is a key element to full healing… not worrying so much about others understanding.  Somehow, this realization is quite liberating for me. Would I keep trying, unsuccessfully, to describe the color blue to a blind person? Of course not.  

I write this because I know I am not alone here.   I feel sorry that my limitations can be an imposition to those around me; for example, I cannot have a conversation if there is loud music or noise in the environment.  Others may forget this but one thing remains constant.  I can NOT have a conversation when there is loud music or noise in the environment.  I don't have to remember that this is the case, it is just the case.  It is as likely for me to be able to have that conversation as it would be for a person to jump off a skyscraper and fly to the ground.  

So now, after 17 years of this being my reality, and after 17 years of trying to get those around me to understand (so I don’t feel like such a burden to them) I am going to accept the fact that it is impossible for brain injury "outsiders" to truly understand.  I cannot continue to rely on others to recognize environments or identify situations which are painfully difficult.  That is something I am just going to have to take full responsibility of for myself.

For so long I have believed others may understand… maybe partly because I have been told so often  'I get it', 'I see it', 'I understand."  How can I expect someone to truly understand without any point of personal reference to base their understanding on?

It  is like trying to describe the color blue to someone.  It just can't be done.  

I have liberated myself.  I hope I have helped to liberate at least one other in the process.

The Calm After The Storm

A month and a half since my last blog...  so much has happened.  Even though I am in the midst of treatment for my breast cancer, I actually feel much better.  

Ok, so I made one unrecoverable mistake...  Discussing the options with my first oncologist led me to believe that most likely I would be having chemo first, then radiation, then estrogen "blockers".  So, being a planner, I decided that my hair was too long to be falling out all over the house so I went to a hair salon and said "Just cut it short."  It didn't really matter what it looked like, right (?) since it would all be gone in a few weeks.  So, chop it off they did.  Easy to take care of and much cooler for Florida summer living.

Back to the oncologist for the oncogene results and she says "Good news!!! " With a range of 1 to 100 and '1' being awesome, my results were a FIVE.  "Very good results, so good in fact, that you don't need chemo!!"  Ok, so my first thought was 'my hair!!!' but that passed quickly. Mostly, I am just so grateful not to need chemotherapy.

Skip Chemo, straight to radiation.  What a relief.  The people at South Florida Radiation Oncology on Military Trail in Palm Beach Gardens are the best.  Six weeks, five to go, but at least it's with some of the nicest people I've encountered in this journey.  From the receptionist to the oncologist, they are all amazing.

Read, read, read.  Few people suffer any adverse side effects.  Painless.  Hmmm.  Can this really be so easy?  Takes a week to have my settings designed perfectly so only the breast tissue is radiated and as little as possible of anything else.  They actually made a firm foam impression of my body lying in the correct position so I can get into the same position each time.  Three tattoos and a sticker with an "X" that marks the spot and I'm set to go.

First treatment comes and I'm a little nervous not really knowing what to expect.  I close my eyes.  Try to clear my mind.  The machine is circling around me making buzzes and beeps.  It feels as though an alien is inspecting me.  Lead teeth under the glass open and close.  Wait... I think I can feel warmth in the area they are radiating.  Yes, if I really concentrate, I can feel the radiation flooding my breast with warmth.  Interesting.  At that moment, the technician walks in and says, "Ok, we are going to start now.  Lie still."  

So much for my acute awareness of my physical senses.

One great thing I've learned so far is that, as far as for me, getting my actual 'plan of attack' decided was the most difficult part.  Not knowing what I needed to do and having to decide what was best -- total mastectomy vs. partial, chemo vs. no chemo, which doctors I felt most comfortable with --- that was the hard part.  Those decisions behind me, the fog has lifted and the stress is gone.  I would have thought the treatments themselves would be stressful, but I just lie there and imagine all the little cancer cells left behind are shriveling up and dying.  In at 11:15 am each day and literally done by 11:30 am.  Not bad at all so far.  

Today I finished treatment #8.  Twenty-two to go and this little stop of my journey will be complete.

Wonder where I'll travel next...

No Flying Snakes Please

Somehow this whole ordeal is bringing thoughts and memories of all kinds into my head.  I'm writing them here because it is cleansing to me somehow.  Once I get it out, new things can bubble up to the top.  And, after all, no one has to read this if they don't want to.

When I received my brain tumor diagnosis 16 years ago, there was a distinct advantage, however strange that may sound.  That advantage was that I had a large mass in the frontal lobe of my brain which, in retrospect, seemed to have the effect of causing difficulty actually understanding the implications of what was happening.  It was quite a long time before I actually felt 'reconnected' to the world in the same way.  I'm not sure I really ever have connected in the same way - maybe I have just become accustomed to feeling the way I do now.  

Why I keep thinking back to that time in my life with the arrival of my breast cancer diagnosis is a mystery to me.  Maybe it brings me comfort knowing I have come a long way since then and I am telling myself I can do the same thing now.  I'm not really sure.  What I do know is that I've been thinking about flying snakes an awful lot lately.

No, that wasn't a typo.  Flying snakes.  Really.  Let me explain.

My mother was alive when I underwent my brain surgery (easy part) and subsequent recovery (hard part).  I'm not sure what I would have done without her, but that's another story. 

It was a Saturday morning, May 1, 1999.  My husband (now an ex) and I were taking my parents and his mother to the Cayman Islands the following day for a one-week vacation.  His mother was actually on a plane enroute to Florida from New York so we were busy packing and preparing for our trip.

That morning I woke up and wandered out to the kitchen.  My husband was at work and I gave him a call.  When he answered the phone, 'gobbly-gook' just came out of me.  He said "Whhhaaahhht???" and I again said some gobbly-gook. Totally unintelligible.  We laughed as it sounded so silly and he said to go make a pot of coffee and call him back when I woke up.  Such the obedient wife (lol) I did exactly that.  As I was pouring water into the old-fashioned drip coffee maker, I noticed the right side of my face felt like it was sliding off like melting wax.  It was so odd a feeling, that I turned to go look into a mirror in the hallway to see what it looked like.  At that moment, I realized I could not swallow.  

This is definitely one day that I am thankful to have had nursing training.  I knew at that moment I was having a stroke.  I went to call my husband but my fingers wouldn't hit the right keys - I would try to push the 9 and it would push a different number, for example.  It started to feel as though there was a bottomless pit and i was being sucked into it.  It was as though a wind was trying to push me down into it and I was hanging on to a tiny ledge at a circle at the top, my only connection to the world.  I needed to call 911.  This is where my nursing training came in handy.  Maybe someone reading this will think of it someday if they find themselves in the same position.  Instead of using my dominant right hand, I switched hands and used my left hand to push the numbers.  That side worked fine.  The brain is so powerful and I have gained so much respect for this amazing organ over the last 16 years.  

What I didn't remember was which side controlled speech so when the 911 operator picked up the phone, I tried to say 'I'm having a stroke!' but again I spoke in that now-familiar gobbly-gook. Wow!  That's why I talked to my husband that way and we both thought I was just groggy!  The power of our brain really became more evident to me in that moment than it ever had been before.  The operator was dispatching EMS to me and asking me questions.  I couldn't speak clearly, but you would think you could at least make a sound that resembled a yes, no, uh-huh, something!  Not possible...  Just sloppy bleeaah bleeah bleeah (aka gobbly-gook)

What does this have to do with flying snakes you ask?  Ok, let me explain.  I was taken to a local hospital and admitted to ICU.  Arriving in ICU, I still had no idea what was happening or why I had the stroke.  The neurologist who was on call that day, thankfully, came in and told me about the diagnosis.  Ok, ok, the snakes.

My mother was the first to arrive at the ICU.  At this point, my speech had returned somewhat and she said "What HAPPENED??"  I told her.  I had a brain tumor.  She said, "No, really.  Why are you in here????"  I told her, really, I have a brain tumor.  I couldn't get her to believe me for several minutes.  You see, my mother had this strange saying.  When we were sick or complaining about some ailment she would jokingly say, "Oh, come on... it's not like you have a brain tumor!"  But this time she couldn't say that.  It was a brain tumor.  I could see she was thinking the same thing as me when I looked into her face.  Oh no... what could be worse than THIS????   One of us asked that question out loud.  I can't remember who.  We thought for a few minutes and then realized there was something that could be worse.  It could have been my daughter.  

From then on, and to this very day, I like to imagine that my daughter had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and that an angel had come to me and said she would give it to me instead if I wished.  POOF!!!  Wish granted.

For me, whenever something bad happens, I always try to think of something that could be so much worse.  Then all I have to do is be glad that that didn't happen.  

Now (here they come) I absolutely hate spiders and snakes.  Not much we can do about them.  But close your eyes and imagine we lived in a place where snakes curled up around tree branches and hid in roof gutters or on top of high cars and buildings.  Now imagine they could actually fly!  Fast, too, so they would shock you when they suddenly wrapped around you and started snapping at you.  Oh my god, I would hate that.

So, when all else fails and it seems like the worst thing that could happen has finally happened, and you don't even want to imagine your own child or grandchild sick or hurt, think of the flying snakes.  After all, if there were such a thing you surely would wish there was not.  

POOF!!!  Wish granted.

A rose is a rose... but is a nurse really a nurse?

So the answer is finally here: I have cancer.  Funny, I always thought information like this would hit really hard, that it would be an 'oh my god!!!' kind of moment... but it wasn't.  Somehow I just knew so there was no real shock involved.  Not even a little bit of a surprise.  Honestly, I think I would have been more surprised if they had said it wasn't cancer.

What I do find surprising is the level of compassion, empathy and willingness to help on the part of health care providers I am dealing with.  For a few years around my daughter's birth, I worked in a doctor's office.  If someone had difficulty for some reason, maybe a baby born with a birth defect or a stillbirth, something I knew was causing them mental distress... I would help them a little more knowing they needed it.  Compassion, after all, is an integral part of nursing.  Without it, who would even want to be a nurse?  

But, ask your doctor's nurse sometime if she is an LPN or RN.  No is usually the answer.  They are often not nurses at all, just people willing to work for a little more than minimum wage.  They put on the scrubs, hang a stethoscope around their neck and gladly label themselves as a nurse.  But be sure not to make any assumptions here.  A doctor can call anyone in his office a nurse if he/she so chooses.  The actual Miriam-Webster definition of a nurse is: 'a person who is trained to care for sick or injured people and who usually works in a hospital or doctor's office'.  Trained by who?  Could be the office manager, doesn't matter. There is much lacking in that antiquated definition.  A nurse should be someone who cares for people, who will do his/her best to make the patient's and their family's experience with illness a little better than it would have been without having him/her be part of it.  Someone who understands how stress affects a person's ability to remember what was said and may influence their ability to reply quickly or to make many decisions.  Someone who knows they have to be the stronger one and wants to help in any way they can. Someone who actually has the knowledge and background to enable them to do so.  Where did all those nurses go?

What has been so difficult for me in this new journey hasn't been dealing with the fact that I am somewhat deformed now and need to decide how to handle what could ultimately be a terminal illness.  What has been the most difficult has been dealing with the insensitivity of the staff in the doctor's offices.  The doctors are great!  Unfortunately, most of the interactions I have are with office staff.  "I didn't get the pre-op orders from your surgeon, I need you to call them and tell them to fax them to me."  So I do.  "They don't need pre-op orders.  Just tell them to send us medical clearance for surgery."  So I do.   "There have to be pre-op orders, ..."   Doesn't anyone just pick up the phone and call for the patient anymore?   That's what I used to do.  Would I ever have said to a patient, especially a patient with a known brain injury, "Don't you remember (very sarcastically), I TOLD YOU I would call you when I heard from..."  My mouth just hangs open in utter disbelief that people can be so uncaring and rude.  Doesn't anyone realize that inside my mind was the dialogue "I might have cancer, I might have cancer, I might have cancer."

But have you noticed what is happening to us as a society?  People are becoming less and less accustomed to speaking to each other.  Courtesy is unnecessary when there is no interaction.  We are forgetting how to be courteous to each other.  When is the last time you called an office or business that a person actually answered the phone, a real person?  "Your call is very important to us... please listen to the options carefully because they may have recently changed."  Even people in relationships with each other sit at restaurants and other public areas with their faces in their phones not even acknowledging each other.  Is it time for us to add Social Readiness and Interaction Training to the required courses for high school students?  

I have been very proud of my grandson because of how well he has been taught to be polite.  What astounds me is when a little 3-year-old boy holds the door for someone and they don't even acknowledge with a 'thank you.'  He sets out in anticipation to hold the door and get to play the 'thank you' and 'you're welcome' game.  He seems so confused when there is no acknowledgement.  Not meaning to be rude he usually just looks up and says "You're supposed to say thank you."  Yes, Tucker you are right!  They ARE supposed to say thank you.  Are we so preoccupied in our own self-importance that we don't even have to time to set this example for a young child?  To show some appreciation so he will have the incentive to want to keep doing these things?  I don't think those things are that important to anyone anymore.  

Ok, so I am approaching my sixty-first birthday and all old people say 'things are not the way they used to be.  We used to..."  Is that all this is?  Is getting old making me picky about unimportant things?  I honestly don't know.  Maybe as we get older we start to view the world as such a hostile place that we just don't want to be part of it anymore.  I'm not quite there yet but I do find myself wanting to be around people less and less.

Fortunately my friends are considerate and compassionate.  It is strangers and people I am forced to deal with that irritate me.  As I have gotten older I have learned to pick and choose my friends carefully.  Maybe with all this complaining I will get knocked off a few of their lists.  

So it's more than 2 cents (why do we even have pennies anymore, they're not even worth bending over and picking one up when you see one).  I'd say I just unloaded at least a good $2.75.