I’m hoping that by reflecting back on my life in its final throes the blast-off will go easier; relief after a lifetime spent aboard Apollo 13:
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*An earliest memory at three sitting on my alcoholic uncle’s knee, him reciting (probably slurring):
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace.
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living.
And the child born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.
Intuitively I knew I was born on Wednesday.
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*Getting up before school still dark, trudging through my Omaha World Herald paper route in all kinds of weather before I turned double-digits; the family car and family that might have driven my route during rain and snow, still snug in their garage and bedrooms.
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*Getting a bike for Christmas–now I could ride my route, delivering the afternoon Hastings paper more expediently. Now I had more time to work dad’s farm for free all summer from 14 until graduation. Now, rather than trudging through rain and snow at 5:30 AM, I got to trudge through ankle-deep Nebraskaville gumbo mud and ice-cold well water while irrigating. I was an aircraft carrier, the skeeters were F-16s.
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*While my fully-pubed Nebraskaville classmates were earning sports letters, my only high school award, accolade, achievement was winning a trophy for having the ugliest legs in all four grades. It was some forty years later when my family practitioner casually mentioned that I had vitamin D deficiency–rickets!--caused by childhood malnutrition! So . . . That’s why my legs ache all my life and why I “won” the uncoveted honor way back when.
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Thinking back as a skinny kid, dinner for six was a single measly skinny chicken (before hormones) and an ice cream scoop of unseasoned mashed potatoes. Me, being a growing lad, got one skinny drumstick. It didn't matter much since my asshole older, now-divorced, brother squished his scoop through his teeth, ruining my appetite anyway. And in the off-chance that I actually did choke down my single scoop of unseasoned mashed potatoes and begged for a double as Tiny Tim might, the mom would snap; then sigh; then whine in a deplorable wail: “Oh, Craig, you’ll never eat all that!” Six-foot-one/142 pounds at graduation—I’ve gained seventeen pounds since then by following her “Oh-Craig-You’ll-Never-Eat-All-That!” diet. My regret—I should have made a video and made millions, one weight-loss-wishers could have watched as they fought the urge to eat: one with a nag ragging on them while other actors do the mashed-potato-through-the-teeth thing. Might have sold like hotcakes—no exercise required!
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*Self-worth shot by six; re-discovered at 66 through therapy. All that time I could have liked myself.
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*Ashamed of the mess we Boomers left the planet, the first ever generation of instant gratification, mass consumption and mass trash, fueled by the mass media (mmmmm . . . a correlation?). How did our ideological ideas of Earth Day, world peace and harmony, compassion, sharing, and “we” of the Sixties fueled by weed, become the money-grubbing, narcissistic, overindulgent “me” fueled by coke a decade later?
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*I’ll probably be reminded–one final time—how I mowed over my RayBans on the Saturday afternoon of May 16, 1998.
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*A family that was one only by definition. No hugs, kisses, or compliments until I met my wife (and in-laws). They taught me how to love and be loved. And introduced me to salt and pepper!
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*If all the world’s a stage, Billy-boy, then our married life was filmed inside a Desilu studio 1600 miles from Hollywood. I’m sure I’ll smile, maybe leave laughing, rerunning the mental videotape between my ears remembering the impossibly zany situations and half-baked schemes Lucy2.0 and her Bobaloo bumbled through together. We had a long run, a great run, but now I’ve been axed by the Galactic Network Bigwig from his gold-plated boardroom in Universal City. We all get canceled, eventually, but my hope is that we will be reran through eternity!
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*No more aches, pains, sickness, bumps, bruises, cuts, hurts, lumps, breaks, or hemorrhoids (if the afterlife takes Medicare!)
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*I’m supposing the “bright lights” I experience at death will be from those of Gawd’s grand game show set just as the end credits are rolling and the Grand Announcer is shuffling me off-stage with, “Thanks for playing, CraigE, better luck next time!”266Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrFbjRfKWIK
Fade out . . .
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