Age and other Thanksgiving Thoughts

Every time I see my Great Aunt Sally, she says: “Oh, I haven’t seen you since you were this (makes hands like she’s about to catch a basketball) small,” and I see her like every year. As I was leaving, she says: “It was nice meeting you.” Sally lives with my grandmother Kay, who will be 90 in January. My grandmother’s mental faculties remain intact (“If he’s (Al Gore) going to run for president, he’s going to have to lose some weight”) but she’s shrinking and arthritic. Between the two of them they manage to keep things going fairly well. My Aunt’s father (to whom I’m not related, my Dad has 5 brothers, my mom 3, so all my aunts are by marriage) is 97, and his line is: “The only people interested in living until they’re 100 are people in their nineties.”

One of my cousins is 29, on the cusp of no longer being a “twenty-something.” When he asked his father, who’s quite a character, for career advice his response was: “Propecia.” My brother is also 29 and is wearing his hair longer than he has since high school, and may or may not be attempting to cover up male pattern baldness.

My Uncle got Guitar Hero for his birthday. My mom was amazed that my brother and I were able to pick up the game quickly, and it assuaged her fears that a (relatively short) lifetime of (relatively heavy) abuse had screwed up our nervous systems in a permanent fashion. She was very relieved, until she saw my twelve year old cousin play, and saw just what undamaged synapses could do. My Mom, who’s hooked and will be receiving guitar hero and my old playstation for Christmas, says that since she’s known him my uncle’s always had the best toys.

I heard a few stories I’d never heard before this year, including one that started “The only time I ever took LSD two days in a row…” I love stories about 6/70’s. We had a second thanksgiving dinner yesterday at guitar hero uncle’s house, and the only thing better than thanksgiving is doing it two days in a row. I don’t know if the same is true for a “substance made in the kitchen of a Univ. of Maryland drop out, C+ chemistry student.”

One of the traditional thanksgiving activities is the family band. My brother and I are musically competent and my twelve year old cousin (who’s pretty amazing at Guitar Hero, but he’s had a lot of practice) plays the drums and his older brother, who was a music major at UI-U-C, plays the cello. He has an electric cello and a pretty stout bass rig; bands without cellos are missing out big time. We were working on Eleanor Rigby, which it turns out is a fairly boring two chord song, when I noticed that it was the same as a Michael Franti song called “Time to Go Home,” which is an awesome two chord song. We looked it up on the computer and played it for him, and he picked out the bass line instantly and we were off and rocking. Not present for the jam session were the cousins that are piano virtuosos, my father and his banjo or any of my uncles whose musical talents range from surprising to not bad for an old guy.

An old family friend was talking about music with my father when I walked up and my father accused him and myself of liking “baby-boomer music.” I happen to be a big fan of Jorma Kaukonen, and my response was “I was, after all raised by baby-boomers.” Bruce Springsteen was mentioned and I went into my rant about how terrible his Jazz Fest show was, and I attempted to describe how much I hated that show. It turns out, just before I walked up, my dad was pitched the Seeger Sessions album and I was ragging on this guy’s favorite CD. That ended the music talk and the subject moved to space travel.

In order to travel to the nearest star and back in half of a human lifespan, the energy required to accelerate, decelerate, reaccelerate, and then redecelerate (according to spell check, reaccelerate is a word, but redecelerate is not) a human is more than all the power ever generated in the history of mankind. The necessary energy could, however, be reduced by half if people were half as big, or lived twice as long.