TRAVELS WITH YODA PART VI

TRAVELS WITH YODA PART VI So far it’s been a busy summer for Yoda and me. We’ve been doing what other aging “Rock Stars” do this time of year and have been doing a “tour” of sorts. We titled our little summer adventure the “Too Young for Social Security and Medicare, Not Blind or Messed-up Enough for Disability” tour. (The logistics and putting all of that on a T-shirt was a nightmare.) We’re a little more “bare bones” than the other tours. We don’t have semi’s full of equipment and “roadies” to schlep everything to all of the Indian Casino’s, Branson and the “One Night Only” shows in Vegas and Reno lounges the way the other people do but we still have our followers. In years past we had our share of groupies asking us to sign all sorts of body parts. These days we still have our groupies. A few still want to date Yoda and the rest of them still want my autograph…albeit on a medical form to remove or fix something on or in my body. It used to be a turn-on to have a woman request I take off my clothes, it would lead me to believe we were heading in an interesting direction. Now when I hear that all I feel is dread wondering what sinister plan is up their sleeve… or worse. It would suffice to say we’ve been on the road a lot lately and haven’t had the opportunity to check in as much as we would have liked to. Yoda has already grown tired of doing parlor tricks for people like levitating vehicles and such. Every waiting room looks just like the other ones for me now. Even the people somehow all look the same. The only saving grace is we haven’t had the stage rushed by a bunch of Q-tips in vintage rock t-shirts wanting to throw their DEPENDS up to us… I’d never be able to sleep again if they did. Everyone still dances around flicking their Bic’s which, strangely enough hasn’t stood the test of time as well as we might have thought. Since way back then fire codes have gotten stricter and equipment has gotten more sensitive so the occasional unexpected shower happens now and then. The bill for trashing a waiting room is a lot more than a hotel room back then too. The dance moves we thought were so cool back then look a little spastic in this day and age and could cause you to get an unexpected new med (and quite possibly a new ensemble) when you finally see the doctor. We seldom encounter the paparazzi these days. We leave most of the photo shooting to the X-ray technicians as a general rule. Other than that unfortunate night when Yoda had one too many margarita’s and did his light saber act naked we’ve been forced to pose for a camera phone or two but that’s been just about it. The tour is far from over for the summer so be on the lookout for us at a hospital or medical center near you soon.

UNFORTUNATE CLOTHES

We all have them; you know the ones, purchased on an impulse thinking it was the greatest thing you’ve ever seen or it might get you through those “in between sizes” times. Some of them you actually did wear…once. Somehow or another they all quietly (and sometimes magically) and quickly found their way back to the deepest, darkest, corners of your least used closet hoping they will somehow disintegrate and disappear without ever actually touching them again and have to admit you really bought them in the first place. Women are usually the actively guilty party to this fashion travesty in their attempts to show up their friends and social contacts while men tend to come by it a little more unconsciously. If it’s clean (and sometimes not so clean) and within a certain color spectrum they’ll wear something until it rots off of their bodies. Styles are a secondary thought. If that style looked great on them thirty years ago…it should still look great on them today is the male general rule of thumb. The only reason a man changes his hair style throughout his life is because he ends up with less and less of it each year and you can, unfortunately, pretty accurately guess a man’s age by the amount of hair product he does (or doesn’t) use. This is also why “then and now” photos are so deceptively easy to figure out. Women agonize for hours over their choices trying desperately to convince themselves they’re being daring, cutting edge, possibly even sexy. “Do I even have someplace to go where I can wear this?” is a common thought that passes through their minds as they try to decide about their choices. Men, on the other hand, walk into a store and grab the first familiar thing they see in a size and color they can live with and are back out the door in less than fifteen minutes. Only patterns occasionally throw them a curve…not that they care. Women will probably only see it for the first time when the men are getting ready to go somewhere. “It was on sale.” Will be their defense mantra should their purchase be questioned as some sort of absolution from any perceived fashion faux pas and consider the conversation done and over with. Women will proudly model their purchases hoping for positive affirmation to their bold choices only to get something like “Don’t you have three other things exactly like that only in different colors?” as his eyes return to the TV. The exception to this is lingerie…as long as it’s not playoff time or a bowl game is on then all bets are off until halftime. Making an extreme change requires a courage most don’t posses as well as financial flexibility the majority of us simply don’t have these days not to mention a stylist or qualified expert (that isn’t a relative) to bounce your ideas off of. With that said, most of us tend to tweak our appearance in drips and drabs as the opportunities present themselves which leads us back to our stash of unfortunate clothes. I can sympathize and emphasize with the women more than the men in this area. I have already more than once admitted I have more shoes than most women and pretty much every man I know. My clothes are vast no different from scrutiny yet still carefully organized by size, color, fabric, season and occasion. It is not likely you’ll catch me showing up at your kid’s wedding in a pair of Dockers, shirt and tie with a jacket emblazoned in the colors and logos of my favorite sports team. Needless to say I have made some very unfortunate clothing purchases along the way from obtaining these items from time to time would have to load up several bags of hideous garments and drive to a Goodwill, St. Vincent’s, or other thrift shop clear on the opposite side of the valley to donate them and give myself some assurance I won’t likely encounter someone wearing any of those things a few weeks later. I realize what that makes me sound like but my brain can only take so much abuse these days. Part of me is proud for doing this and knowing someone will get some use out of my crazed purchases. Part of me sometimes wishes I had shredded them into rags and dispose of them piecemeal as I use them to clean stuff and leave no trace of the crime. Let’s face it…I don’t know what the shit I was thinking when I bought some of that stuff, but it seemed so right at the time (Note to self: No more Margarita’s while shopping.) All I know for sure is I have helped create a world of sadly dressed people and I should feel ashamed of myself. For all of the times I have advised people to put their best foot forward style wise in public and social gatherings I have enabled people to do just the opposite. So from today on that stops and I promise to be a more responsible contributor to the world at large. That’s only fair…right?