Today is Veterans Day here in ‘The States’, as we like to call the country when we’re feeling all jocular.  I myself have not been feeling the least ‘all jocular’ about les États-Unis during 2017, dating from November 8, 2016, but don’t get me started on that.  And do not get me started on Alabama.

What this year has been for me, Veterans Day-wise, is the fifty-year anniversary of surviving eight months of classes in the Air Force learning ‘Intercept Analysis’ before embarking to the Mediterranean in 1968 to eavesdrop on North Africa.

I’ve romanticized my four years in the military all out of proportion, but the unlikelihood of it still astounds me: I was a delicate flower at twenty in 1967.

As I am no longer twenty, I can verify that in spite of guarding against it, conversation among the elderly invariably drifts to infirmities.  While not suggesting that you the reader are elderly, I shall still be brief.  I have been dealing recently with a rendezvous with concrete.

I am in my tenth year of speed walking for thirty minutes every day.  Apparently nothing short of muscle memory saves me from the treacherous uneven sidewalk, but it was not always so.  Some time ago, I tripped and dove into the sidewalk landing on my shoulder; it must have been quite spectacular to witness from a distance.

Still a delicate flower, I suffer from what I call ‘The Princess and the Pea Disorder’ (or ‘PPD’), characterized by feeling that if one thing is going wrong in your life, the whole thing sucks.  I’ve saved you from my bad vibe by recently abstaining from very much writing here on ‘The Dave’ (as we like to call the blog when we’re feeling all jocular).

I wrote a piece years ago about my daily walk, when I was still writing about more than just how long Stephen and I have been a couple.  If I can scare it up, I think I’ll republish it.  It was a crowd-pleaser, and one of the few posts I wrote straight through and hit the ‘Publish’ button without torturing it.

By the way, the title to the present post is a little misleading.