As I read the recent issue in “The Atlantic” in the Dispatches section “A Fine Country For Old Men” by Idrees Kahloon, I paused midway on its second page. What struck me was something I’d thought about nearly daily. A question of how my generation and a generation before mine received benefits for their aging out of the workforce. And it wasn’t just that that’d struck me. It was as well, the knowledge that our youngest child states every now and again of how the Boomers have screwed things up for her generation. I’d mostly held my disagreement, keeping it to myself. Yet I did not exactly agree or disagree with her, until I reckoned with all the facts. That’s out of respect for another human being. Yes, respect for a child who’d just become an adult of our modern era. That’s not what happened in my day, nor was it certainly in the family I grew up in. To me, my upbringing compared to today’s standards and mine were an aberration if not a catastrophe. On the outside I appear ‘okay’, some...
This day twenty-eight years ago. Tom Brunetto (he has since passed 2014) and I met at the Ridgewood Duck Pond at 4:15am. We made a pact a couple weeks leading up to this day. We both had topped off at 36 miles. So, we promised each other we would do a 40 miler together. Tom overdressed and forgot shorts, he was wearing long running pants. The temperatures soared passed eighty degrees. I think it hit a blistering eighty-eight degrees. The sky was clear blue. The last eight miles Tom was beside himself. He said he couldn't finish. Instead of my getting upset, I bribed him for the last eight miles to get us to forty. I had no energy left and still had work at 11am till 8:45pm that day. The only rest I'd get was a shower, and a drive at 3:45pm to a doctors office for four more pain patients to treat. So, Tom having other stress in life I decided, since I helped mangle his legs for perhaps a week's recovery I said, "I'll tell you what. You run eight more miles get...