Let us age with: Grace Humor Courage and Confidence
Pass this on to other seasoned women who will enjoy it.
Mary Rose McGill has been kidnapped. Marge Aaron, retired homicide detective, has called in Abner, another retired detective, and his K-9, Dagmar the Great Dane. Hadley Joy Morris-Whitfield, Robinson Leary, Marge Aaron, Alphonso Greatwood, Raven Five Horns, and Wiley Vondra follow Abner and Dagmar to the Meadow Lake’s parking garage where Dagmar has sniffed out the kidnappers in a hidden room behind a storage area. Now Wiley’s phone rings….
“Mary Rose?” Wiley said anxiously. The girls looked on with equal anxiety. Dagmar and Goeffrey looked at each other. Raven and Alphonso moved in closer to Wiley.
“No way!” a man’s voice said over the phone’s speaker. “It’s not the old lady. It’s Muggsy.”
“No one is really named ‘Muggsy’,” Robbie said.
Marge hit 911 on her phone. She spoke into it for just a minute, then moved closer to Wiley. He looked at her and she took his phone from him.
“Hey, Muggsy,” Marge said in an artificially pleasant tone. “Are you Muggsy Dumpster’s grandson?”
Silence.
“Who are you?” came the voice from the phone.
“Detective Marge Aaron. I put your old Pops away, Muggster, and I plan to do the same with you.”
More silence. Everyone gathered around Marge watching her intently.
“We don’t want no trouble, Detective.” There was a pause. “We want to get rid of this old lady Mary Rose. We don’t want her no more.”
Marge waited. Then Muggsy continued. “She’s a holy terror and we can’t take no more of her.”
Marge smiled. “What did she do?”
“What didn’t she do!” Muggsy said. “First off, she has this poop log app.” He sighed. “She made us upgrade the app then record her poop. What kind of lady does that??”
All three women were smiling now. The men looked confused.
“Then,” Muggsy added, “she fought us! How old is this broad, anyway? Like, I mean, she wound up and gave Louie a groin kick that...” and here Marge, Hadley and Robbie said together with Muggsy, “DISLOCATED HIS KNEE!”
“Yeah!” Muggsy said. “And she made Louie go to the Hy-Vee and get (pause) DEPENDS, damn it, and him with a bum knee. Then he got the wrong kind, had to go back and as soon as he got back, she sends him out for pizza way down on Saddle Creek!”
“Sgt Peffer’s Italian Café.” Hadley and Robbie said together.
“She won’t come out of this room without us coming with her. She’s mean! And we’ll come out but no fuzz around, okay, we get in our car and get outta here.”
Marge walked over and looked out the door to the garage entrance. She talked into the phone as she limped back. “No police cars in sight, Muggster, Come on out.”
They waited. The door behind the shelves opened and in just a minute, Mary Rose and two young men appeared. Mary Rose walked with great dignity over to Wiley and gave him a hug.
“How’s your Pops?” Marge said to the tallest of the young men.
“Dead as a doornail,” Muggsy answered.
“He was a capable adversary,” Marge said. “I hate it that you are following in his footsteps.”
“Family tradition,” Muggsy said.
He and his companion walked between the friends and got into a small car parked in a stall near them. The car moved quickly toward the garage door.
“Head to the elevator. Fast.” Marge said, and the whole group, including the two dogs, moved as quickly as they could to the elevator.
It was from that vantage point that they watched the garage door open and saw the small car stop, faced with two police cars blocking the exit and four armed officers waiting, guns drawn.
“You said there were no cop cars in sight,” Robbie said to Marge as the elevator started its upward climb.
“There weren’t when I looked,” Marge smile. “Of course, I had my eyes closed.
“You were terrific, Mary Rose,” Hadley said.
“Fantastic,” Robbie said.
“Right on, girl,” Marge added.
The men nodded and Wiley hugged Mary Rose again.
“A girl has to do what a girl has to do,” Mary Rose said. Geoffrey sat and leaned against his lady as one single tear crept out of one eye and rolled gently down her cheek.
“I want to be with those women!”
Everything Changes: Everything Ages (Buddhist Wisdom)
It is what it is; it becomes what you make of it.
A is for Aging
A Burned-Out Old Broad’s, Perspective on Growing
My father died when he was 63
I was 22
He was ancient
Now my son is 63
He’s just a kid
Agony-
When we are old there are some terrible agonies, but I want to talk about the sweet agonies of growing up in our time.
Ted and I were remembering the illnesses of our childhoods and immediately we came up with the cure for all ills – the red hot-water bottle, except it wasn’t a bottle. It was a bag. A vicious, lurking, child-humiliating bag. An enema bag. A big red bag with a long tube that ended in a plastic nozzle that went into your most intimate part
and emptied in warm – often too warm – soapy water that you had to hold for as long as humanly possible and then loyally sit on the toilet until your mother was satisfied.
And if you had a cold – there was an equally torturous cure – the Vaporub treatment. Our chests would be plastered with menthol-smelling Vaporub, hot cloths laid over it, and then you were covered up to breathe in a horrifying smell that made your eyes water.
I am convinced I have lived this long because I was cleaned out and toughened up so often in my youth that I can stand anything now.
If you have memories like this, let me know – at joy.johnson@msn.com.
I will love hearing from you.
It is what it is. It becomes what you make of it.
Instead of thinking about all the agonies, how about a list of all the things for which you are grateful. Simple things such as a hot shower, the smell of the soap in that shower, and speaking of smells; how I love the smell of the “Death by Chocolate” coffee I put in my Keurig every morning, or the comforting sounds of Ted’s morning sports shows on television. Before I started writing this, I walked down the hall and ran into my friend, Joan. Things and people for which to be thankful.
We have so much for which to be thankful, even during annoying hard times. Don’t let the negative overshadow the positive, no matter what is happening.
It is what it is. It becomes what you make of it. Live it with-
Grace, Humor, Courage and Confidence
