
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 15, 1994                   TAG: 9408170049
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

I'M TOO OLD FOR ALL THIS STRESS

And we thought the Golden Years were going to be sensational. Loafing around the house, seizing the day, drinking lemonade with the grandchildren on the front porch, getting all those great discounts.

Not me, pal. It's a stressful as ever out there.

I have managed to have two cars - one of which is senile - that come up for inspection in August. Thus, if both, or either, of them have serious defects, we will be on the dole, and the children will be in disgrace.

I think this kind of modern stress might have made a difference in the way our great men behaved. You will notice, incidentally, that great men are getting harder to find.

I doubt that Abraham Lincoln would have had sense enough to write the Gettysburg Address if he had worried about two cars coming up for inspection in the same month.

Abe had the blues a lot. I hate to think of what kind of dreams he might have had if his children told him he was an old fogey who should buy his own telephones and stop leasing the old rotary dial types for $112 a year.

When my kids told me that recently, I didn't let on that I hadn't been sure why I was paying the $112 a year. That aside, I will say that whoever I send this money to has a very authoritative bill.

I told my kids not to worry. I said that by the time I understand the telephone as it exists today, you'll call the hospital and hear someone say:

"If you wish to get a triple bypass by 1 p.m. today, push pound now. If you want a tummy tuck, press nine."

How am I supposed to be a great man and maybe come up with a plan for restructuring U.S. foreign policy with junk like the above banging around in my head?

I know there are a lot of people my age who calmly and routinely use those machines that give you cash when you stick your card in them. They understand national health insurance and their telephones. They drink a lot of lemonade.

They'd be calm if their television sets started acting up and showing, for example, CNN in black and white and HBO gone to snow in the middle of this show about a serial tomato squeezer.

If there is hope for me, it is in my mind. The other night my mind gave me this dream in which I was young again and talked to a real, human operator and gave her the four-digit number of this girl I used to phone a lot in East Radford.

That helped a lot.

So what if the number was busy?

by CNB