No More Pennies from Heaven...
Just this week, on the occasion of my 45th birthday, I posted on Facebook that life is short and precious, and therefore one needs to seize every opportunity to slide, glide, bounce or roll obnoxiously into cronehood. The example I used was that one should, for instance, indulge in the luxury of counting small increments of change out piece by piece at the grocery store checkout, thus holding up the entire line and thoroughly pissing the Rushy McRushsons behind one off...
And later this same week came the public announcement that Canada is discontinuing the penny! That's right, as of this autumn, 2012, the penny will be withdrawn from circulation, thus shattering my future geriatric dreams of plaguing instant gratification fiends with angst, annoyance, and grocery queue rage! How, how shall I ever become an agent of chaos now?
Plan B was to perch near the front of city buses after I am too grizzled to drive, tapping a skull-topped shaman stick on the floor and reeking of garlic and patchouli oil while muttering esoteric woids and phrases. Maybe even imitating Alice Cooper and randomly screeching, "WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!" following several hours of companionable silence. And yet all this may be thwarted, too, if shamanism, like yoga, continues along its surefire path into the cultural mainstream. Little pink-spandex-wearing shamanistas in Nikes will doubtless sprout up on every city bus in the next 20 years, shaking designer rattles and pointing out every person who has a wayward dead guy attached to them. Sigh... what's a girl to do?
Ah well, I'm sure I'll think of something. In the meantime I shall content myself with placing my bare hand on the belly of Mother Earth and reminding her that we long for spring. There's delight in that. I'm as tired of the snain as stale Twinkies in my high school lunch bag.
I go neither gently nor gracefully into Cronehood... but I go in the knowledge that pink spandex sucks. It sucks now, and it will suck in 20 years. And by the Goddess, there's some comfort in that!
I often have thoughts of flaunting my age instead of humbly fading into the background in hopes no one will notice that very thing. However, growing up in Chicago I can't forget the "babuskas," women of a certain age who trampled everyone in their path on the buses and used their shopping baskets, umbrellas, and loaded purses as weapons. So I'm still looking for a way to be gracefully and subversively outrageous.
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