Proof You're Getting Old: You Smell "Dusty"!

Please don't be offended at the title of this post. Do old people smell dusty? Do old people smell bad or funny?


Like I said, please do not get angry at me about this comment, direct your anger to my ex-friend Tom.


Let me explain... Tom insulted me the other day. He said I smelled like an "old guy." I thought we were friends.... Guess not.

GIORGIO ARMANI - AQUA DI GIO - WOMEN

I don't know, but this stuff looks like it smells like the ocean or maybe fish... 

Or, even fish bait. And what's the deal with that jet airplane and the boat?
Airplane fuel? Diesel? Fishes? Yeah! That's it. 
Smells like shark bait! "Oh baby! I love that salty smell!"

Remember when you were a little kid and your grandparents or some older family friends would come over to visit you? It would be someone like aunt Emma and uncle Fred from Philadelphia who your parents hadn't seen in ten years but they loved them so dearly. Remember?

In return, aunt Emma and uncle Fred loved you so much too. So much so that they sent you Christmas presents and birthday presents every year. You kind of knew who they were (in pictures with you when you were a very little baby) but you didn't remember them well.

Now they have come to visit. Remember? You were 10-years-old and they arrived at your house. You smile and are a bit shy. They insist on kissing you... Especially aunt Emma... 

Uncle Fred doesn't kiss.... He just shakes your hand and smells like old pipe tobacco or some old musky after-shave that you think he bought before the great war... No, I'm not talking about Vietnam... I'm talking about The Great War as in 1914.

Aunt Emma likes to kiss and hug you... Way too much. The hugging is bad enough because she smells like dusty lilacs or stale lavender and her teeth have lipstick spots on them... But the worst part of the kissing you all the time isn't that. It's the fact that when she kisses you she always slobbers on you too. And she slobbers a lot... Her slobber smells bad too... It kind of smells like boiled cabbage or corned beef hash.

Of course, the family dog slobbers on you too, and that disgusting enough, but at least the dog is afraid of your wrath and will stay away when you push him away... Aunt Emma? Afraid of you? Ha! She pounces on you every chance she gets like a desperately hungry Bengal tiger goes for a baby lamb with a gammy leg. Like devouring you whole, she hugs and kisses and slobbers on you every chance she gets. Oh! That sickening wet pond-scummy kiss! Yuck!

Anyway, the point I am getting at is that, besides your aunt always slobbering on you, I think older people smell, well,.... different. Don't you think so?

Maybe, in the old days, smelling like a dusty barn or a moldy garage was sexy. I don't know. I wasn't there. But nowadays I think you have to smell like a famous movie star or something that smells like pheromones or whatever those smell like! 

Don't get me wrong. I've always liked old people. They have the best stories to tell and they always have lots of great wisdom to pass on... I've learned a lot from old people. 


But darned if I didn't meet lots of them who smelled, well, they smelled "dusty."


Not that long ago, why it seems like it was just a few weeks ago, that I was 17-years-old... Heck, it was just the other day that I was in my twenties and thirties.... My current wife told me that she "loved my smell." 

I think I smelled like a wild stallion out at a stud farm... Hee, hee... Memories...

But, darn, now I'm 54... My wife is 41... I wonder if, to young people today, we have started smelling like dusty barns? No. It can't be! We were born after the Industrial Revolution so maybe our generation smells like old oily rags, broken down cars or burnt out transistor radios. 


You know, that burnt smell that worn out transistors made? Yeah. That must be it!


I still think that young girls probably smell nice. But I don't get the chance to smell them too often as doing that could be construed as a crime.... And, I don't appreciate it when people are sneaking glances at me while dialing 9-11 (in Japan it is 110 for police emergencies).


As I write this, my ex-friend, Tom, sits next to me. Let me ask him exactly "What do old people smell like?"


Tom says that, "People over 50 smell like old Japanese dusty pillows."


See? I told you he was a jerk. Right after he insults 75% of the entire population of the planet earth, Tom realizes his error and begins to try to kiss my a*s and says, "But I like the smell of old stinky pillows."


Yeah. Sure, you do, Tom. Sure. Stinky pillows? Wow! Can you imagine what that does for the self-esteem of us senior citizens?


Well, what's the point of all of this? I guess it is just another sign of growing old; younger people start to think you smell funny. Well, that might be true... But I am proud of my stinkiness. It is a badge of honor.


They say that one of the ways to grow old with class is to gracefully give up the treasures of youth. I didn't think that not smelling like a boys locker room was a treasure of youth, but I guess it is... And I have to give it up... Like my old socks...  


I don't want to smell nice anyway... It just means that I'd have to take a shower everyday and brush my teeth... 


I didn't get married because I wanted to shower and brush my teeth everyday... I mean, what's the point of getting married if you still are expected to shave, shower and smell good? 


I thought you did that because you wanted to get a girlfriend... Not because you already had one!


Tomorrow, in part two of this report, I will investigate why older, married couples never have sex... Stay tuned!
  

Recurring Dreams and Alternate Universes

I think most people have recurring dreams. If most people don't, then maybe I am just weird because I have had the same five recurring dreams over and over for these last 27 years. Do you have recurring dreams? 

Since moving to Japan, I have had basically five recurring dreams. But, now that I think about it, one of these dreams, the dreams of me flying like a bird or a jet plane, stopped a few years ago.


I wonder why my dreams of flight have disappeared? Maybe because I turned 50 and stopped dreaming like a 17-year-old? No, I don't think it is that because I still feel like a 17-year-old many times (just won't be doing the crazy things I used to do).


The first of the five recurring dreams I've had was flying in the skies. They started when I was a small boy. In my dreams could fly like Icarus. Can you fly in your dreams? Those are fun dreams... Sometimes, I guess when my condition wasn't so great, I'd have a hard time achieving lift-off in my dream. I'd have to run and flap my arms as hard as I could until I took off. Sometimes it was a great effort and I had to try over and over. Other times, I was just like a graceful bird; a tiny step and jump and I was off soaring like an eagle in the clouds.


Then, when I got to about 30 or so, I could fly like a jet plane. In fact, many times I knew I was dreaming and that I was flying. I figured it was some sort of alternate universe and so I rode it like a snow-boarder rides the snow or a surfer rides the waves. I knew I was dreaming but didn't care. When  could really fly and fly like a rocket, doing a thousand miles and hour, I would consider flying over the Pacific Ocean and going to the United States to fly over my parents house.


Weird thing is that I would fly out a few hundred miles from the coast of Japan, look over the water, and turn around because I'd start getting scared. Scared that I would wake up and be flying over the cold ocean, fall into it, and have to swim back. I used to be a good swimmer, but not that good. Being so high over such deep water freaked me out so I'd turn back. Even though I knew it was just a dream.


The other problem with flying to the USA like a 747 in my dreams was that, at such high speeds, I had a difficult time turning and would often continue on a straight line when I wanted to make a hard left turn.


Sounds ridiculous because it was all a dream and I knew it, but I also felt that, somewhere in my heart, dreams were and alternate universe and a reflection on reality. I guess I still do.


Another dream that often occurred was fishing. I love fishing. Before I moved to japan, I went fishing every week. Sometimes two or three times a week. Fishing is heaven. Fishing is spiritual and fishing is close to God.

There is a saying about fishing. It goes like this: "Do you know what the difference is between a religious man and a spiritual man? A religious man goes to church and thinks about fishing. A spiritual man goes fishing and thinks about god."


I am a spiritual man. I'd go fishing everyday of the week if I could.


I used to dream about fishing at least once a week when I first came to Japan. Sometimes I dreamt about it every night for days in a row. That's because it is difficult to go fishing in Japan and I had been an avid fisherman since I was a small boy living in Minnesota. Minnesota is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" so fishing is a lifestyle there.


Fishing in Japan, Tokyo especially, though, is a chore. Japan is a crowded place and the good areas for fishing on the coastline are usually taken by the local fishing collective so they don't take too kindly to your fishing in their good spots... In fact, they might give you the boot up the ass if they catch you fishing in their prime areas. Going fishing in Japan is not like the USA where you can just grab a rod and reel and head off to the lake or shoreline. In Japan, fishing is an all-day expedition like 18 holes of golf: You need a plan and it costs lots of money.


My other two recurring dreams, or maybe I should say nightmares, are related to work. Whenever work is going poorly or I worry about bankruptcy or the economy going down the tubes (an understandable and common recent worry since 2008) I have bad dreams of returning to the USA and going back to my old jobs. 


The worse job is returning to Prudential to the same old office and working with those dishonest people that I wrote about yesterday in Working With Thieves, Liars and Crooks. The weird part of the dream is that I am always scheming about returning to Japan and, even after one year, haven't sold one single contract yet they do not fire me in my dream.


Talk about being able to live off one's laurels!


The other work-related dream is that I go back to working at a Sears, Roebuck and Company in Ventura, California (it was in Oxnard when I worked there, but has since moved causing the city of Oxnard to sue the city of Ventura, but that's another story about the insanity of the USA).


When I was 17 I started working at Sears in the catalogue ordering department and then transferred to commission sales in the Photo & Office Equipment department. As a commission salesman, I made a heck of a lot of money in the late 1970's.


In my dreams, for some bizarre reason, I go back there and have to work in the sewing machine and vacuum cleaner department selling poorly made and badly designed Sears equipment. The nightmarish part of the entire thing, besides selling this poorly designed and quite unstylish junk, the same management is there at the company running around doing their weird hijinks.


There is the store manager, whose name escapes me, but he was a very short, yet handsome man. He dumped his beautiful wife and four beautiful daughters (whom he often brought to the store) to marry another woman (who he soon also brought to the store). I always noticed the daughter because they were very beautiful girls. He got his lightening strike from god when, soon after the divorce and marriage, he was diagnosed with some sort of brain cancer. No kidding. I think he soon died after that. 


Then there was a guy named Walter who was a section chief who was married but he ran around unable to control his libido and was trying to take every woman working at the store to bed. I guess his wife got fed up with it one day and dumped him and got another boyfriend.


Walt, being like the immature little boy he was, then decided that he wanted his "toy" back (the wife he disrespected and treated like sh*t) and, from what I understand, went screaming drunk to the boyfriend's house while she was there and started banging on the door and breaking it down.


The boyfriend shot him and killed him.


Later, after the funeral that I didn't attend, many Sears employees were complaining that the wife was wearing black but didn't seem sad. I heard them complaining about that and said nothing. It did nothing for me but confuse me as to what was really important to these people and what they were thinking about. 


There were lots of really weird things going on at Sears at that time. I found the same types of problems when I got myself transferred to the Sears in San Fernando Valley and found that store, too, was full of some very twisted people whose priorities were not success of the business and success of their personnel and staff but protection of their position and attempting to continue their lives acting like high school students with their idiotic politics and clicks.


But, I digress....


These are the recurring dreams I often have. Even in the case of Sears or my old jobs, it is nice to be able to see my old friends and to remember them in their beautiful youth. Even when I have nightmares, I am able to realize that they are nightmares and am able to view them like a movie so they rarely scare me. 


I went to see my sick old dad a few weeks ago. He wasn't the same person that I will always remember. In my dreams, he is a young and handsome 30+ some year old Marine wrestling with us kids in the yard. For the sick, aged and ill, dreams are an escape. Back to better times and the treasures of youth. 


Surely, dreams are one of the best things about living that there could possibly be. I look forward to sleeping every night and I look forward to the dreams of my youth.

How about your dreams? I think if you wake up and think, "Today is going to be great" and you keep track and write down your goals, you can control your dreams and make sure they are positive. Try it. For more on that, read, One Easy Step to Becoming a Better Parent and More Successful at Life.