12 Comments
Jun 18, 2022Liked by Erica Manfred

Super column—loved it!

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Jun 18, 2022Liked by Erica Manfred

Thank you, Erica. After that inspiring email, I'd go have a drink except I can't drink any more because it irritates my intestinal tract. I'm a little younger than you are, but I can relate. I, too, give credit to my doctors for keeping me alive. Please continue to do your part by staying ornery.

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Jun 18, 2022Liked by Erica Manfred

Stubbornness (nice names are persistence and resilience) is definitely a virtue.

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Jun 18, 2022Liked by Erica Manfred

Thanks for the insights. As I grow older, I am continuously surprised by the aging process. I look to you for understanding. Well done!

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Jun 18, 2022Liked by Erica Manfred

I had a hip replaced a decade ago. Then, despite my surgeon's admonitions, I went back to playing full court basketball 1-2 times a week with other middle age ladies. Then covid hit, the gym we played in at a school shut down, and sloth set in. I took an online exercise class from a local hospital, which, in addition to the years of running with an altered gait up and down the court due to a bad knee, further eroded my artificial hip joint. (Advice: NO SQUATS). I dislocated that hip last year. Thank god for morphine. As a friend was driving me home from the hospital after repair surgery, I said, maybe my Dad was right, I should have retired from basketball after the hip replacement, then this would never have happened. We looked at each other. Then we both said, nah, even if I'd known, I would have kept playing. It was 8 years of great enjoyment.

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Jun 19, 2022Liked by Erica Manfred

At your best! Now I know the spinal surgery is behind you. You're back!

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I love this piece. Always loved your writing style. Wisenheimer New Yorker. Ah the woes of getting up from a chair or a couch and climbing the subway steps and lifting this and that. We can’t escape the signs of aging. My hearing is declining and how I see it is the Grim Reaper is tapping on my shoulder reminding me he’s nearby. Feh. I don’t know how long I want to live. I thought mid-80s is enough. Time to leave the party. Talk to me in 6 years.

Wanted to let you know Beryl’s Aunt Mary turned 100 yesterday. I was going to visit her but couldn’t because she got Covid at a casino in PA! Also, Gloria had a stroke and is slowly improving at Montefiore in the Bronx. It happened Wednesday night. I had three friends die in the last year not including our beloved Loni. That’s the hardest part of living longer: our friends and family leaving the planet. The aches and pains we can endure; death is so fucking final.

Thanks for this edition of Snarky Senior, aptly so called.

Love,

Bob

Age 79

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Jun 19, 2022Liked by Erica Manfred

Love this piece! I am 73, still trying to do do better .. but.. healthy living is so difficult.

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Good one.

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founding

Oy! Such a good piece. A dear friend just turned 80, has pancreatic cancer, gone though weeks of chemo now having five weeks of daily radiation and will then have a cat scan to see if surgery will be called for. When she comes out of each procedure, the first thing she does is light up a cigarette. We don't say a word. I just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreichs "Natural Causes," good reading for those of us at this age.

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There’s a moment in Manhattan in which Woody Allen is breaking up with Mariel Hemingway, at a soda fountain.* He says (roughly), “You should be going out with boys your own age. Boys with names like Scooter or Biff.”

I was screeching with laughter (thinking ‘how could she be serious about him, anyway?’), when the camera went to her face, which was the model of hurt.

In mid-screetch my emotions did a one-eighty. I couldn’t recreate the noise that came out, but its evolving entirety conveyed the immediate transformation from hilarity to pain. I’m sure that an intake of breath was involved.

Your writing is brilliant, and often has me making that sound in my imagination.

I’m only 8 years behind you, and, for now, in good health.

*As accurate a rendering of the scene as memory allows.

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