In a fit of weakness, I changed my mind about Thanksgiving and had the big meal with family, at my daughter's house. She worked too hard on it for me to just ignore it, so the turkey and the pig didn't get a pardon from me . . . and I feel a little guilty about it. I gobbled down the usual fare, the traditional Thanksgiving food, and without shedding a single tear. I ate pecan pie for dessert, visited with family and a few friends, and then came home and collapsed into a post-feast coma. This is when you watch football on the tube, something you can do in a coma.
But, it's the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm in a slow recovery. I won't eat much at all today, and that's good. And I most certainly won't go shopping on this Black Friday, which I see as an event for morons. I'm not a Christmas person, so there's no reason for me to get excited about shopping. I got over that a long time ago. I sat up most of the night working on a book I should've finished ten years ago, but it kept calling me out. Time gives a writer a different perspective on an old manuscript they quit on. For one thing, I can't remember why I stopped working on it. Maybe I just got lazy, a malady of the mind that comes over me from time to time. Maybe I didn't like the direction the book had taken, but that's forgotten now, and I have new ideas.
I've developed all kinds of book characters over the years, and some of them have been animals. I've written stories about dogs and cats and horses and even once about a remarkable cow. Long ago a writer told me to write about what I knew best. "If cowboys are your best friends, write about them." I was a college professor for a long time, but I've written only one story about a professor . . . and he was a drunk. I've written lots of stories about cowboys, but I'm tired of doing that now. I like stories about ordinary people who get caught up in extraordinary situations. And what do I know best these days? Old farts. So, this new book endeavor is about a retirement village full of older people, and it's based on the notion that if you must get old, then do it with some good humor. If you can't laugh at it, old age will kill you.
You know, of course, that old age won't kill you. You hear it all the time, "Well, he just died of old age." Well, he didn't. He died because something wore out, or he got sick, or he slipped on a bar of soap in the shower and hit his head. Old age didn't kill him, but sickness or injury did. And yeah, I know that old age brings those things about. We almost always cooperate with death, just let aging take it's course and eventually rub us out. I wanted to create characters willing to say, "Ok, I know your coming sooner or later, Grim Reaper, but I'm not just going to sit here and wait on you. If you want me, you'll have to run me down 'cause I'm going to still be moving."
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