OVERLAPPING

Thank God Barack Obama got elected president and not John McCain. I write this for many obvious reasons but there is one reason I have been made more aware of the last few weeks. Age. I have been, of course, watching every step our president has made since he took office. Actually I have watched every step he has made for over 2 years but that's my problem not what this is about. I marvel how he can keep so many complicated and important issues straight in his mind. How he can answer one reporters intricate question on one subject and then instantly switch to something completely different and sound like he knows what he is talking about.
This past week at the G-20 Summit meeting with all the top leaders on world issues, dine with dignitaries and their wives on a social level, just trying to remember who you shake hands with who bows, who you don't touch, has to be mind blowing. Then he gets on a plane with many other people and heads to another country, a country that doesn't like us, or a country that wants our help. This can not be handled by a 73 year old. It doesn't matter what your feeling towards the issues are. It doesn't matter how much experience you have, it doesn't matter how long you have been in government. You can't handle it if your 73.

I know. I'm closer to 73 then 47. I worked in a job for 25 years that thought God gave you 2 of everything so you could use 2 at the same time. You were required to plug a hearing device into one ear so you could talk to a customer while you were typing an order in your computer with your left hand, filling out forms with the other and listening in on a meeting going on around you with the other ear. At 35 this was not particularly difficult but closer and closer to retirement age I heard myself say more then once, "I'm busy, I only have 2 hands" I just couldn't do it now.

Now that I am retired, I was born to be retired, I find that I not only can't overlap, doing 2 things at the same time I can't do 2 things in the same day. Saturday I was doing dishes and decided the window over the sink needed washing. I could no longer see the neighbors building. If you have been in my house you understand how bad that is cause you can not only see my neighbors building, you can touch it. Of course I had to wait until Sunday to tackle washing the window. Remember I had already cooked and did dishes on Saturday. Yesterday was laundry day. Even though it takes the washing machine a minimum of 30 minutes to go through the cycle I had to rest between wash and rinse. Tonight I have a meeting so there goes any thought of running the vacuum. This is what retirement means. Of course you can go to the movies, out for dinner with friends and head to a casino in the same day but that's different. I don't know why, it just is.

There is an age restriction on how old you have to be to become president, but there really should be a limit on being too old to run our country. Senior citizens need time to write things down. We need to look up words because we forget so easily. We need to check on our own families names let alone dignitaries of other countries. But most of all we need to know why we walked into that room, or went into that country before we go there. We don't look good scratching our head and turning around and walking out with nothing. Let younger, more (I can't think of the word I want to use here, oh well) do the hard things. I'm too busy trying to remember why I am writing this anyway.