I don't think about romance much, but after I went to see the doctor––so competent! so smart, kind, and funny too––I thought,
I wouldn't mind someone to watch over me . . . like Dr. McCoy watches over Capt. Kirk.
Fanvid by Marz, 2014: “Kirk and His Doctor: Someone to Watch Over. Me” (Ella Fitzgerald )
I italicized "competent"--not what I would have chosen as romantic when I was young, but mygod, the longer I live, the more attractive--even romantic--competence is.
Competent just means to have the "necessary ability, skill, or knowledge to do something successfully".
Successfully--not even exceptionally.
Does that sound kinda mediocre?
But when the "something" you're talking about is Life...
Well, to be competent IN LIFE is exceptional!
Like, say, a person who can...
change a bike tire, change a diaper,
recognize & express emotion, make a salad,
write a condolence card, write a grocery list, write to their senators,
parallel park (this excludes me), hold your hand,
read a book out loud, use a dictionary,
invent lyrics for old songs, get a joke,
floss their teeth, return library books,
make tea when you're sick,
play, pay bills, . . . and LEARN NEW THINGS.
And also, they like you, and are able let you know it.
That's a lot!
Do you have some to add?
____________
Making a list reminds me--last night, having given up on Frankie the plucky Vietnam nurse in The Women, I picked up Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.
I always list Carried as one of my favorite books, but I've only read it once, about thirty years ago. The title story is basically what it says: a list of the things foot soldiers in Vietnam carried. Not all of them physical.
The writing is beyond competent.
I felt restored, reading it.
And speaking of soldiers...
I don't think this article was meant to be funny, but I laughed out loud, though it's shocking ––(but sort of endearing)–– how INcompetent America's youth are:
The military can't find enough prospective recruits who can pass their physical and mental tests:
"Half the Battle: Why can't the U.S. Military fill its depleted ranks?", New Yorker, 2/3/25
The army started a training course in 2022, Future Soldiers, for would-be-recruits who are close, but need pre–boot camp boot camp to close the gap--lose 30 lbs, learn to read English, do 5 push-ups...
Not funny overall, no, but I did wonder at some of the author's choice of
examples. Were they simply unavoidably ludicrous? Like the
Navy shipyard president who can't hire enough workers because, "We're competing
with Chick-fil-A for workers".
Really though, it's outrageous and tragic that the children (recruits can be 17 to 40 y.o.) are so fat and out of shape they can't do one push up--not one!
They reflect the same problems that ENRAGED me so much I stopped eating sugar:
"A lot of people who arrive have never eaten healthy foods, or exercised regularly, in their lives––that's just the reality of the American we're dealing with," Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pfeiffer, who helps oversee the program, told me.(About forty per cent of U.S. adults are obese.)"I ate chips and played Call of Duty all day long," one young woman said. She went to a recruiter at 17 years old and 305 lbs. The recruiter told her to come back when she'd lost 100. "He didn't think he'd see me again," but she did it and then entered Future Soldiers to lose the last 30 lbs.
(Entry restrictions have loosened.)
Reading the article, I pictured Abbott & Costello in the army. The poor darlings... Who is taking care of them?!
Another disturbing- to- ludicrous reflection of where and who we are is the exception to military weight restrictions: hackers.
The rapid automation of warfare ...will require highly trained specialists. So will the demands of "offensive cyber war"--that is, hacking enemies.
"No dumb kids in those jobs," Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me.
"We need Python coders... Fat kids welcome!" ____________
Yes. Well. Weird world, eh?
Weird world to grow up in!
Marz was talking to me about how much she's liking her science classes, even though--or partly because--they are very hard, and bow she is wanting to become a grown up, someone knowledgeable and skilled and "of use".
("knowledgeable"--what weird spelling--I had to look it up!)
I think of the young people in the article above who want to put down the chips and the controller, get off the couch, and join the military.
The article's author quotes Trump's ban on trans people in the military referring to "the humility and selflessness required of a service member"--adding that "these qualities seem scarce in Trump's Washington, but they're easier to find among the young recruits I talked to."
Not that the recruits want to "serve their country" in the old-fasioned (naive) way--they want to improve their lives.
A noble goal!
It's harder to be useful when you're old in a society that excludes old people, though the internet is a huge boon. (Blogger seems to be mostly 60 + .)
Besides us aging bloggers, my role model these days is the handful of old women who volunteer at the thrift store. They're 73 years old (me, in ten years) to 88 y.o., and many volunteer other places too. One of them who helped start the thrift store 35+ years ago also volunteers at the food shelf I go to, though she suffers from long term vertigo. (I had vertigo for three months--it was horrible.)
Personally I'm a fan of an invisible kind of usefulness: blogging, of course. Pat at Weaver of Grass inspires me—she blogged up until a few weeks before she died of cancer.
(Sadly her son closed her blog—for invited readers only—which is a shame because she wrote posts you might want to reread.
Wait, a kind commenter let me know Pat’s son archived Weaver of Grass, here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240913055517/http://weaverofgrass.blogspot.com
WRITING A NOVEL. (Lol. But really.)
Practicing prayer.
You can call prayer something else, like the interior cultivation of equanimity, or Being Peace, or meditation or visualization...
Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh says,
"In prayer, the electric current is love, mindfulness and right concentration.Off I go to work--to be useful... BUT SLOWLY.
If there is a change in the individual consciousness, then a change in the collective consciousness will also take place. When there is a change in the collective consciousness,
then the situation of the individual can change;
the situation of our loved one who is the object of our prayer can change. . . .
From this powerhouse we call mind, we can change the world.
We change it by means of a real energy that we ourselves have created. "
That's the biggest lesson of my hurt knee:
Slow down!!!
Thanks for blogging, ❤️ ya'll!
