Tinny Tussle

Is it just me, or are people speaking faster?
Sometimes I feel like my ears are full of plaster.
When I watch TV they all seem to be, like, twenty,
And their lips do move, but the background noise is plenty.

Are they making sense, is there anything they're saying
That I ought to hear? What's that awful music playing?
And that high-pitched whine, what's it doing in my ears?
It is always there, but grows louder with the years.

Now I'm getting mail from the Beltone Corporation
For those free coupons for an head examination.
I guess they heard that I require some augmentation
If I wish to hear my neighbor's conversation.

But I don't blame drums for my hearing aberration,
Or my lack of skill in interpreting vibration
Or the gap that forms between each generation
Or some nasty gene that has caused deterioration.

No, indeed, I say, there's a simpler explanation.
It is mere old age that diverts my concentration
For when I was young, life was rife with aspiration,
And the aim of mine was to get an education.

But that stage is past, as the Bard so aptly penned;
I no longer sway to the beat of every trend.
Existential thoughts now well up in my head
And drown out things that other folks have said.

Such success

In keeping with my father's admonition that “if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything”, I have refrained for more than a year from adding to the pile of screed you may have seen here.

But my problem is not that I can't say anything nice, but rather that I can't say anything clever. Given the number of websites that repeat wise quotations from everyone from the John Adams to Frank Zappa, I feel like The Preacher who proclaimed that 

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. “_Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV

Well, that's kind of depressing, but strangely reassuring, if you stop to think about it. 

So when someone says, “Hey man, what's new”, I guess I'm supposed to reply, “Same old same old.” Or I could just say, “Wait for it.” But that could get old really quickly.

It does amaze me, though, the cleverness of those quotation innovators who lurk all over the internet. Example:

“If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.”

 In my dad's day, that would have been “If at first you don't succeed, suck eggs”, possibly because sucking eggs predates skydiving by several generations.

  I forget how many years it was before I saw the connection between the “suck seed” and “succeed” parts. Even more time passed before I understood that “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs” was the equivalent of saying “try telling her something she doesn't already know.”

I was certain my grandma sucked eggs, until I observed her technique. She pieced both ends, enlarged both holes, and blew the innards out of the eggs, rather than sucking them.  The yoke was on me.  

Today marks the 71^st year since I took up planetary space, so I am working very hard on doing something that I have never done before, namely, creating a clever internet-worthy quotation. I figure it will likely take me a year, so you're invited back here, same time, same place next year to watch me suck seed or suck eggs.

(Man, that was a mouthful).