"..I hope I die before I get old...."

"...talkin' 'bout my generation..."

Well, it's happened. I have joined the ranks of the old people. When I was a kid, you never heard of your friends' Dad or Mom getting sick unless it was the flu, a cold but I only remember one friend who had a parent die from heart disease.

My Mom, was a big time smoker, liked her rye and ate whatever she wanted. In the 1970s, she was taking birth control pills and had some pretty bad hypertension. All this together was a disaster waiting to happen. Eventually, at the age of 38, my sisters found her on the floor motionless. She has a stroke. A good one too. It paralysed her on the right side and she has to learn to walk and function all over again. She lived for almost 30 more years but she took it seriously. Gave up her bad habits and lived healthy.

Fast forward to 2016. For weeks, even months I've been kind of run down, getting chest pains and sometimes they travel into both arms. One day in September or October, I was out walking with my kids and I had to stop because it hurt. It hurt like a motherfucker. I have had digestive problems my whole life, hernias, ulcers, reflux, plus I'm a porker (quit smoking in 1989 and replaced it with food). So, I figured bad gas. I stopped, farted a few times, burped the alphabet and all was well. This went on and off for the next several weeks. Sometimes it was non-existent. Sometimes it was mild. I didn't worry about it. Then, the levee broke.

I was out walking last Monday morning. I was pushing pretty hard as I had eaten turkey and Christ knows what over the last several days. It started to hurt again. More and more. It was to the point where it was unbearable. I stopped, it went away. I started back up again, and there it was. I got back to the house and it was excruciating. I sat down and it subsided, but then I felt like I was going to puke. The tingling behind your ears, the excessive salivating - yup, it was coming up. "..this is not right....holy fuck....I'm gonna die....". Fuck I haven't seen the latest Star Trek movie yet...(well, that's not the first thought I had...but you get the idea). I was going to ignore it but this one was the worst yet. I couldn't. So, the nausea subsided, the pain subsided, and I thought it was smart (after talking to people) that I should go to the hospital.

I was admitted. Fuckers. I hate hospitals. They took what is called troponin levels, then a few hours later again. Apparently, I had some sort of cardiac incident. Textbook unstable angina. Now, we had to figure out why.

Xrays, sonograms, and more xrays showed a small blockage. It was in a blood vessel at the bottom of the heart muscle. That's what made things hurt. Apparently, your heart muscle needs blood flow. If not, it gets pissed off and reacts. Mine got really pissed off. Then came the catheterization. They lay you on a table, completely bare-ass, and dope you up. Then you get a tube fed into an artery in your arm, feed it like a plumbing snake all the way up into your heart muscle. With this, they inject dyes so they can see your organs moving around in 4K on a 72" monitor. That was the fun part. The not so fun part is that toward the end I was spasming, and my neck and arm hurt like a sonofoabitch. Lucky for me, he was done.

Well, now I'm taking a statin drug and a beta-blocker - also, daily ASA. Just like the old fuckers you see at Dunkin' Donuts or fighting to get first in line at the lab for bloodwork. When I was a kid, heart disease was for old men in nursing homes. When two different cardiac surgeons look you straight in the face and tell you that this could kill you if you don't follow their instructions, it puts things in perspective. I figured "..yup, I'm a fat-ass that's why..." Apparently, I inherited this from my Mom. Heart disease is 70% genetic so it was bound to happen sooner or later.

What does this mean for me? Well, pills, of course. Also, I'm back on Weight Watchers because I love to eat. It's the only vice that I have left. I'm 50 years old and I could have died from heart failure. It scared me. Really frightened. However, this was a really, really loud alarm clock. It was telling me "..look, Jumbo...time to take care of yourself....stop stuffing your cake-hole with Mars bars and taco chips, get off your ass and exercise once in a while..."

I think that this time I'm gonna listen...I may be too old to rock and roll, but I'm much too young to die.

Peace

"...all you're ever gonna be is mean..."

I'm not a Taylor Swift fan, but my son loves her.

However, one of her songs, which is clearly about bullying, sends a powerful message. It talks about those who are mean. Mean to her.

I'm bringing this up because I try my damnedest to be kind to everyone. I'm far from perfect, but I do know that I try to treat everyone equally. I try to be kind, and I try to be polite.

However, when I am kind and polite to someone, and they come back with something really nasty or mean, it's kind of hurtful. You put your feelings out there, and someone stomps all over them. It's not nice, it's hurtful and it's just plain fucking mean.

As I look around me, in public places, such as coffee shops, corner stores, shopping malls and even when I'm driving on the Interstate, I see such misery in people's faces. Sometimes I think that it's because everyone is so mean to each other. What I want to know is why? I know that several times per week, someone does or says something that just pisses me off. I know that I see unhappy clerks at the gross-ery store or 7-11 when I get snacks or drinks. When I see someone like that, I ask them "...hey, are you having a bad day, or are you just feeling foul today..." Normally, they look at me and say something like "...oh, I'm just tired..." or "....I had an argument with..." Then I'll try to lighten it, and make a smart-ass remark to get them to giggle or smile. Normally, it works. Sometimes, it explodes all over me like a shit-shower.

When I was a young kid, my dad used to say "...nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.." and "...do unto others as you wish them to do unto you.." - he was always like that. He had his moments where he would say nasty shit, but he would acknowledge it after the fact.

My problem - if someone is intentionally mean to me, I have a really difficult time getting past it. I'm kind of thin-skinned like that. I'm guilty of being a cock-head at times, but I try to apologize for my dumb-fuckery when it comes about.

So, how about if everyone else was like that? I wonder if we would take less pills, stress eat less, keep jobs and relationships longer and mostly, stop fucking up our kids so that they grow from little assholes into great big fucking bitches and pricks.

That is all...