Yep! This is a Rant!

Damned flashing Red lights are driving me crazy.

Let me try to explain my attitude a little.

You see I live in a 55+ community in Florida and, honestly its a pretty nice lifestyle. Everyone else is living through the same things I am, with our health, with our families and with our money.

And, if there’s someone in our community that irritates you, you can either just ignore them, or just wait a few years and there is a high probability they will just die off.

Don’t laugh, its true! (Well ….. maybe laugh a little).  In case you don’t understand, reread the previous two paragraphs. I live in a 55+ community, which inherently means everyone here has a shorter remaining lifespan than some 22-year-old Millenial who is still learning to tie his own shoes.

So, where the young couples around the country might see a lot of Ice Cream trucks, diaper service trucks and furniture store trucks visiting their neighborhoods, we Seniors see a lot more Rescue Squad trucks than the rest of a more diverse population.

Anyway, even though the Rescue Squads are very quiet as they roll to their destination inside our community, they still have those darn flashing red lights going.

You see, just like the rest of humanity, we, the seniors of America, live in that delusional place where we can pretend that we are going to live forever.

Come on, we all do it.

Our doctor tells us thing like;

• your hips are shot and need replacement,
• your heart is weak, so you need to eat a more healthy diet and exercise,
• you have blocked arteries and you are at risk of a heart attack,
• or one of the many other signs of an aging body.

And what do we typically do?

Why, we just keep on going out to that favorite Italian, or Greek, or fast food restaurant and eating our favorite, yet usually unhealthy foods.

We keep on ignoring that great modern gym that the community has for you to exercise in, you just have to walk up there and use it.

We keep on eating that slice of cake with Ice Cream, bag of chips, pretzels or whatever, for a snack before we go to bed each night.

We just ….. well, we just keep on living the way we want to, and to Hell with all of those warning signs.

But there is something that gets my attention. Its those far too regular occurrences of the nighttime flashing red lights that wake me up at night.

For some reason, I can sleep through a lot of things, but if one of those silently creeping rescue squad trucks passes my house, I instantly wake up and lie there, in my bed, watching as the red rays shine on my bedroom ceiling, right to left then gone, right to left and gone again, repeating its silent message to me.

The lights flash and seem to say;

shouldn’t you be getting back to the gym,

didn’t you refill that heart medicine yet,

shouldn’t you be at least walking every morning like you used to,

and why did you cancel that Doctors appointment.

With every flashing sweep of these red lights across my ceiling, I remember another thing I should be doing to keep myself healthier.

But, like I assume most of my neighbors do, I eventually just roll over mumbling to myself; Damned Red lights.

But before I fall asleep again, I do wonder; who was this visit for?

 

by Don Bobbitt, April, 2016

Copyright Don Bobbitt, April, 2016, All Rights Reserved

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