I’m telling you, drugs are doing us in. Sixty-four thousand people died in the U.S due to overdoes. In one year alone. Twenty thousand of those because of opioids. Can you believe that? When I got my knee replacement I took Oxycodone for a while and man, I gotta say, I was really tempted to take more than one because they really helped me sleep but when they ran out I was happy just taking Ibuprofen. You don’t want to get hooked on pain pills. Getting hooked on Oreos is bad enough.

Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? Has life gotten so meaningless or horrible that millions of us would rather alter our brain chemistry and go to wacky land than face reality? And how do we do that? Popping pills, drinking, smoking, watching those stupid comic book movies?

 Boy, you tell me the ways to get out of this world, everything from buying useless gadgets, reading books written for children about wizards, going to raves and taking ecstasy, filling up on junk food, looking at TV shows about a zombie apocalypse, reading conspiracy theories on the internet, watching porn or horror movies that glorify torture. We invented the internet so that the internet could invent us.

And then on the Fourth of July we celebrate our independence. Independence from what? From everything that matters? I guess it’s a good excuse for a barbecue. George Bernard Shaw was a vegetarian. Did you know that?

I mean, I remember how great Mario Brothers was on Nintendo. Computers and science were going to change the world, and I guess they did. But don’t you get the feeling sometimes that everything is getting worse? Well, not everything. I don’t want to be that pessimistic. For an example, when I was growing up there was legal segregation in this country and you could drive around without even wearing a seatbelt. If you got nothing but Ds in school you were in danger of getting a lobotomy. Took a lot longer to get anywhere, too. You’d think we’d have high speed trains by now, though, like in Japan and almost everywhere else.

 I’m an optimistic kind of guy which is why I like driving and talking to people but in a few years you’ll be taking rides in cars that drive themselves. I guess then I’ll have to retire. I can just see myself in a bathrobe, staring at infomercials on TV. Boy, won’t that be great. A bowl of Rice Krispies, Miller Lite, a pack of Lucky Strikes, Preparation H and a Percocet for good measure and I’m set.

Well, there are other jobs, I guess. I picked up this one guy who told me that he worked for the Secret Service. Just like that. I said, so what kind of work do you do and he said, Secret Service. I wondered if he was bull…I mean if he was kidding around but he looked pretty serious so I said, what’s that like and he says that he had worked for years guarding Ronald Reagan. And then he said that when Reagan died he had to be there when he was embalmed. Said the smell was really sickening, like if you went to the bathroom after eating four quarts of spoiled sauerkraut. Yeah, he said they have to guard them even when they’re dead. I’d hate to be some old guy who looks at people guarding me and thinking, you know, you’ll have to watch me get embalmed. Sorry about that.

We all gotta go sometime. Morticians must be a weird bunch, you know? How was your day, honey? Oh, okay. Had to put Bob’s face back together. Idiot wasn’t wearing a helmet.

My youngest sister, Brenda, died of ovarian cancer when she was only twenty-seven. I’m not close to my other two sisters. They went off to college, got good jobs, married professional big shots and look down on me because I never amounted to much but I was close to Brenda. All my life she was showing me things. Like how to tie knots, add and subtract using paper clips, skate and then how to ski and how to operate a CB radio. Got married when she was twenty-two and then died five years later. Wanted to have kids but didn’t have any. She was cremated. We took her on a boat and scattered the ashes. Her husband gave me all their wedding photos, said he couldn’t bear to see them anymore. He married a year later and had three kids but I want nothing to do with them. No one wants to even talk about Brenda anymore except me. I haven’t skied in years. Ovary comes from the Latin word ovarium, which means egg, so ovarium cancer sounds like something that should be fatal to chickens.  

Well, everyone has some sad, sore spot in his heart, don’t you think? The world is funny that way.  I heard a guy on the radio say that when you die it’s like going to sleep except you don’t wake up and when you’re born it’s like waking up except you never went to sleep. When Brenda died I stopped going to church. All that stuff about heaven seemed like make believe. But I suppose we have to believe in something. If I were God I wouldn’t bother making life. I’d just make angels I could talk to. You religious? Neither am I. There is something out there, though. I just don’t know what it is or how to talk about it without sounding nuts.

Sometimes life can really make you nuts, you know? I remember coming home from school one day, it was about a week from Easter as I remember. I walk in the house and the first thing I see is my dad lying on the sofa with a wet towel on his head. The first thing I thought was that he had a headache but my mother lurches to her feet and kind of staggers around like she’s drunk and I’m wondering if she’s drunk because I’ve seen her drunk on more than a few occasions but she has this wild, frantic look on her face like she’s just seen a horror movie in real life and she’s waving her arms in the air and screaming at me that if I don’t get out of the house she’ll beat me within an inch of my life and then I’m running for the back door as I hear my dad say, it’s not the boy’s fault.

Years later I was having lunch with Brenda, this was just before she got married, and I told her about that day and said, so what was that all about? She said that Mom clipped Dad on the side of his head with a frying pan, the big iron one she used Sundays to cook us French toast. Why did she do that? I say. We were at a table on the sidewalk, eating eggs and pancakes. Brenda leans forward on her elbows, cups her face in her hands and says, a woman called and said that Dad had been having an affair with her.

I felt like I’d been hit by a bolt of lightning. Dad! Having an affair? Is this true? I say. Brenda takes a long breath, sits back and looks around like she just woke up from a dream. I’ll tell you, she says, but it stops here, okay? You won’t bring this up with anyone. I say, all right and she says, it was Lola. Lola is my oldest sister. What are you talking about I say. It was Lola who called, Brenda says. Put wet napkins in her mouth to disguise her voice and used lines from an old Bette Davis movie. I can’t believe it. I say, why would she do that? Brenda shrugs and says, Lola was mad at Dad for not increasing her allowance and wanted to get even.

Some family, huh?  You see ads all the time on the TV for getting your DNA tested because now we all want to know where we came from. Me, I’m looking for a company that will change my DNA.

Beautiful day, isn’t it? You can see the mountains like they were next door. We’re making good time, get you to the airport before you know it. You’ll be in Ireland in what, eight, ten hours? Hey, you hear about that guy got arrested the other day at the airport? Had live snakes in his suitcase. Can you believe that? Somebody should put him in a suitcase, see how he likes it. Can’t stand anyone being cruel to animals and I don’t even like snakes but putting them in a suitcase gives me the creeps.

It’s said that Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland but that’s like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. Poor snakes. They have as much right to life as anyone else. Live and let live is my motto. Anyone with a different motto can drop dead as far as I’m concerned.

Well, with any luck you won’t have snakes on your flight. Flying really is the safest way to travel. Think of how many millions of people fly each year. But after we strap ourselves in and get ready for takeoff don’t you wonder if today will be the day something goes wrong? Pilot error, equipment failure, bird strike, metal fatigue, computer malfunction? Remember the Lockerbie bombing? That was a Pan Am plane. Over two hundred killed in that one. About a dozen people on the ground were killed by falling debris.

They think pilot error caused that big crash in Sao Paulo. Almost two hundred died in that one. And then there’s a weather thing called microbursts. A Delta plane going through a thunder storm hit the ground a mile from the runway. Hit a car on the way down and killed the driver. That Malaysia airliner that disappeared is the one that gives me the creeps. Man, going down in the water and drowning is the worst thing I can imagine. I’d rather hit the ground and get it over with quick. I sometimes wonder what it was like for those people who flew into the World Trade Center. Some of them got on their cell phones to say goodbye. That’s too sad to think about. Don’t even think about stuff like that.

Be sure to take your phones.

I used to say when it’s my time to go it’s my time to go but that’s not really saying much, is it? I don’t think it was Brenda’s time to go. The last time I held her hand she didn’t know I was there. I stayed with her until she stopped breathing. I just couldn’t believe she was gone. But then the room felt empty and I knew she wasn’t there. Her soul wasn’t there. It’s funny how you can feel that sort of thing. You’re connected and then you’re disconnected. The signal is strong, the signal is weak, the signal is gone.

Look at all those tents on the sidewalk. Goes on for blocks. Homeless people, must be a hundred or more. Makes you feel like you’re living in a third world country, doesn’t it? Every time I have to drive past that I get depressed. I read somewhere that almost sixty-thousand people are homeless in Lost Angeles County alone.

I tell you what, you add up all the people in prison, all the people who are homeless, all the poor people who are one paycheck from the streets, all the kids who go to bed hungry, all the people who are sick because they can’t see a doctor, all the people who are addicted to pain pills, all the prostitutes, all the people in mental hospitals, all the vets who have PTSD, all the beat up wives and girlfriends, all the parents of disappeared children and all the people  with arthritis, cancer and heart disease and ask them how they get through the day.

People everywhere knocked down by the gods, who pick themselves up, who lose every time but refuse to be beaten. Someone makes a mistake and your license to teach is yanked like a loose tooth. Or you come home one day to an empty house with a note on the kitchen table. You see guys driving night and day because they got nothing else.  

For the Existentialists, survival came down to knowing that our back is to the wall and that all we can do is face the world and say, is that all you got?  Maybe that’s the only kind of pride worth having.

You know what George Bernard Shaw said? He said that money is not the root of all evil-it’s the lack of money. I used to think that was true but now I don’t know. I think it’s something deeper than that. Maybe people in the old country have the answer. Or maybe we just have to become old ourselves. Old, tired, sad and then wise. Or maybe old, tired, sad and only half as stupid as we are now.

Here we are and you have time to check in, go through security and get a latte at Starbucks. I’ll pull up over there and then I’ll get those bags for you. One day I’ll have to go to the emerald island. Weather must be nice this time of year.

You have a nice trip and don’t forget to give me five stars. Remember, I know where you live.