RobZerrvations

Musings from a Meandering, Mischievous Mind

That “special” feeling.

I don't know about others, but the journey through life can be terribly instructive. I just wish I would have learned some lessons earlier in life for they would have come in very handy. I always knew I was different. Since I can't inhabit anyone else's body and peek into their brains, perhaps we all think we're different. All I know is that I spent a lot of my early years (through my 40s) trying to assimilate to a world I never really fit in. I gave it the ol' college try, trying to discover...

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Regression therapy.

As a society, we like to think that we are always advancing. The old days seem antiquated and often silly. Instead, we believe that today is way better than yesterday, and certainly way better than it used to be. I mean, who would prefer a black and white TV instead of a color one? This is true, of course, on many levels. But on others, not so much. Who would have known that nearly everything we've been consuming since we were born contains microplastics, including some that are so small they...

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The semi-colon.

My wild imagination runs on two parallel paths when it comes to my health. On the one, everything is just fine. On the other path, everything is going to hell in a handbasket and I'm moments away from drawing my last breath. Usually, my labs remind me that I am very lucky to be on the path where nothing is really wrong with me, even after 65 years on this rock. This is remarkable largely because I am famous for doing nothing to improve my health. I don't exercise enough, even though I...

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Growing older, but not up.

As we get older in this world, the news increasingly turns sour. No, I’m not talking about wars, pestilence, politics or the many whack jobs running around our world these days. I’m talking about the inevitable loss of the people we all know and love, the folks we grew up with on TV, radio, records and the silver screen. The Boomers are the first mass culture in history. Unlike our parents, we grew up having the same experiences in common. We often speak in a shorthand of song lyrics and lines...

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The swan song.

This has taken a while to conjure up. It's not easy to write about the loss of a person so important in your life that you find it hard to categorize his role. Mentor? Besty? Surrogate Father? I can't even begin to put my dear friend and companion Bobby Smyth into a box. His passing was not entirely unexpected. At 98, the days that the phone doesn't ring with the sad news rapidly dwindle. At some point, it was going to happen. I had convinced myself over the years that I would be ready for...

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Happy Birthday’s Eve!

My birthday came and went yesterday. I spent it watching mindless TV. My main celebratory indulgence: Rhubarb Custard Pie for breakfast. Not the whole pie, mind you. Just a slice. Gone are the days when I would justify bad dietary behaviors by saying it was my birthday, or at times, a whole month of debauchery dedicated to turning another year older. It's not that I didn't celebrate the milestone. I just did it a bit differently than most folks, for it occurred to me that the real celebration...

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A golden oldie?

In 2012, I returned to Washington State from my eight years of incarceration in Florida, doing my penance for trying to find love in all the wrong places. Retirement seemed like a dream back then. It was so far away. It's what old people did, not something I needed to think about. I still had a lot to give to the working world. I wasn't one of those old people who peaked long ago in their career and were marking time until the day they had a slice of cake, received plaudits from their...

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The rearview mirror.

I am turning 65 soon. If I were a car I'd be in a museum. Or the junkyard. I've never been one to care much about the vehicles that carry me around in this world. I don't think I've washed my car in over 10 years. I've done much better with the one some would call my body. It gets a somewhat regular washing, but my wife still has to remind me. To be fair, I have never cared much about the body I drive around in. I know others do. I see them applying paint, making sure their headlights shine,...

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A good lesson indeed.

In my youth (for me, that is from birth to age 55), I used to assume everyone was just like me. Since the only experience I had ever had as a person was as me, how was I supposed to think otherwise? This, of course, caused issues in my life. I think the fact that I have so few friends to this day is because I held them to a higher standard than they themselves wanted to achieve. It could be argued that I did this was some of my exes. It wasn't my ego at work; I could see the potential in them...

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The unfriendly skies.

I used to enjoy flying. I took my first big trip in 1984. It was to the Cayman Islands. I was just 24. It was the first time I had ever been on a commercial jetliner. Since then, I have rarely lost my love of flying. Even in the middle of a hellacious thunderstorm on approach to Minneapolis when we were bouncing around the cabin, I still found a way to enjoy the ride. In the spirit of the moment, I started singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and by the time I had hit the chorus, the rest of my...

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A Real “Dating” Problem.

Being a pirate isn't easy, at least if you want to have what some people call a normal relationship. I have written here and there about my many misadventures in pursuit of love, including a book that chronicled all my exploits in often embarrassing detail. But now that I am in a happy, fulfilling relationship with someone that took the better part of five decades to find, I can reflect on the effect my pirate life has had on relationships, both good and bad. I only write this because I was...

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Doing one’s duty.

We're coming up on a year now since the stay-at-home orders began. In that time, I have been out of the house (i.e., beyond the street in front), a total of 14 times. Most of these were out of absolute necessity because of family health issues. Otherwise, I've been on lockdown. I see others out and about on social media all the time. That's cool. I don't expect everyone, or anyone for that matter, to be like me. I just have a sense of duty to do my part in this war against this invisible enemy...

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