Nurse the Hate: The Wing Suit Idea

I was speaking to an associate of mine that was dropping off a charitable food contribution to a “senior high rise complex”.  These are some of the most monumentally grim places in America.  Forgotten senior citizens in small cell like apartments that smell like off brand disinfectant wander down to the lobby to stare out the window for visitors that aren’t coming.  Each day seamlessly blends into the next at God’s waiting room.  Nothing happens.  It is without question a worst case scenario for the end of the road assuming that we take “rocking back and forth in your own filth in an asylum” off the table. 

I have a vision of myself a couple of decades from now sitting in a urine scented chair by the door while a second rate ceiling speaker attempts to soothe residents with “music of their lives”, in this case The Pointer Sisters “Neutron Dance” or “Bust A Move” by Young MC.  I try to phase that out and instead listen to the music in my head as I stare out the window as my life’s savings are sucked dry by the facility.  I will attempt to engage anyone that walks into the place with what I think is witty banter.  It isn't though as I am damaged.  No one will really understand what I am talking about.  Other people's visitors will brush me off as quickly as possible as they only want to drop off a bundt cake to grandma and escape within 20 minutes.  I will eventually shuffle back to my room and wonder why I smell like onions and urine

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This crystal clear vision is probably why I engage in risk taking activities like skydiving and shark diving.  It has to be better to be eaten by a shark in the near future than to wait around to have a stroke in the dayroom at “Sunset Towers”.  I figure since I wake up now thinking “how much longer can this go on?”, how much worse would I be in the future at Sunset Towers?  I can barely get myself across town to work at this point.  I would no doubt be spending my days at Sunset Towers trying to figure out how to drive my rascal into traffic and make it look like an accident.  Maybe I could convince someone there to drive me to a skydiving facility and have them toss me out at 35,000 feet as I try to figure out how a wing suit works.  “There you go old man!  No!  No!  Spread your arms!  Jesus!  No!”  The headline “Senior Citizen Torpedos Into Playground” is much more spectacular than “Friendless Man Dies In Squalid Apartment”.

I saw the Meat Puppets play on Saturday.  Those guys absolutely destroyed.  Holy crap were they great.  I saw them in 1985.  I saw them again when they opened up for Nirvana in 1994 maybe?  They have been doing it for 36 years.  That’s a long time to be in the van.  They played old stuff, new stuff, and traditional songs, each one with energy and a palpable sense of enthusiasm.  To see these guys delivering like that was really inspiring.  As most of their contemporaries are playing oldies sets frozen in 1986, these guys are still doing their inimitable psychedelic desert biker band thing while still pushing forward.  It made me want to not get eaten by that shark just yet and see what they do next.  I am buying that wing suit though just in case.