Tomorrow is—–well, you know.

(I thought that we deserve some nicer things in this space today than the intense reviews of the campaigns and campaigners that we have been posting.  I’ve been saving this one for just such a day and suddenly in this year in which age has become such a headline, this seems kind of appropriate.)

One of my former reporters, Drew Vogel, who was on the Missourinet staff in the 1970s, has gone on to a thirty-year-plus career as a well-respected Ohio nursing home administrator. He wrote this in his blog on July 6, 2019:

Ramblin’ on a Saturday morning –Youngest and Oldest of us

I recently read a story out of Kansas City about a seven-year-old who dresses up like a policeman and visits nursing homes.  He cheers up residents by giving hugs and writing them tickets for being “too cute.”

There’s an eleven-year-old girl in Arkansas who is CEO of an organization that raises money to grant simple wishes to nursing home residents – things like a Happy Meal or a pair of slippers.  She’s raised over a quarter of a million dollars.

Too often the most significant thing missing from an older person’s life is not a spouse or friends who have passed away, not lack of money or even reduced creative or intellectual stimulation.

No, it’s the disappearance of children from their lives.

I witnessed it myself.

When we moved to Florida in 1980, my son Bobby was seven or eight years old.  We didn’t have a boat, but we went fishing a lot.  Pier fishing.

In those days you didn’t even need a license to fish off the pier.   After I left Florida 30 years ago the state changed that.  For the greater good, you now have to buy a salt water fishing license to pier-fish.

Fish tend to bite when the tides are running. Coming in or going out.  Doesn’t seem to matter.

Between the tides – it’s called a slack tide – the fish take a siesta.

We were fishing from the pier at Ft. Desoto State Park near St. Petersburg.  Bobby was the only youngster on the pier.  I was the only working-age adult.  There were maybe eight retired gentlemen.

When the tide stopped, Bobby noticed several of the men were still catching fish.  He went to see how they were doing it.

“Dad,” he said running back to me a few minutes later, “give me some money.”  He needed to buy squid for bait and a few little tiny hooks.

The grandpas on the pier had showed him how to catch the angel fish that nibbled on the barnacles attached to the pilings.

Bobby caught a few, but every time one of the retired gentlemen snagged one they would yell for Bobby and put the fish in his bucket.

At one point I told Bobby to quit bothering people.  One of the guys said, “He’s not bothering anyone.  All our grandkids are up North.  We love having little boys out here on the pier.”

I never mentioned it again.

We took about two dozen fish home that day – all angel fish.  Bobby and I fileted them, put them in a pan with some butter and lemon and stuck it in the oven.

Dinner was on Bobby that night.  Boy, was he proud.  And it was all because of a connection between kids and seniors.

I was administrator of the Ohio Veterans Home in Georgetown, Ohio the year the H1N1 virus was going around – the Swine Flu.

I cancelled trick-or-treat in the facility that year because there was so much of the influenza in the county.

I nearly got lynched.

The residents, many of whom were big tough, old war veterans – guys who had fought in combat – cried foul.  They confronted me at a Resident Council meeting.

“We love it when the kids visit us,’ was the general context of their complaint.

“And I like it when you guys are breathing,” I said.

I won.  They begrudgingly admitted I was right.

I did dress up like the Swine Flu, complete with a pig head, at Halloween that year!

At another facility, the Activities Director had a baby.  Her husband worked out of town and was away four nights a week.  I allowed her to bring the baby to work while she was arraigning daycare.

That little girl had about ten doting babysitters anytime she was in the building.

The point is that there is a special bond between kids and our “seasoned citizens.”

I’m convinced it goes beyond grandparents getting a chance to “do it right this time around.”

It’s much deeper than that.  There’s a camaraderie between the newest and the oldest of our society – and I suspect of any society, anywhere in the world, anytime in history.

I’ve have always considered life to be a bell curve.  When a person is born we feed them, change their diapers and generally take care of them.

At the end of life ….. well, you see the similarity.

Shel Silverstein illustrated it best.  He’s the guy who wrote Johnny Cash’s big hit “A Boy Named Sue.”

But, Shel Silverstein was much more than the writer of novelty songs.
One of my favorites, Silverstein was an author, poet, cartoonist, songwriter and playwright – and a member of the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

One of his most poignant poems dealt with the relationship between kids and senior citizens.

The Little Boy and The Old Man – by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’
Said the old man, ‘I do that too.’
The little boy whispered, ‘I wet my pants.’
‘I do that too,’ laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, ‘I often cry.’
The old man nodded, ‘So do I.’
‘But worst of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems
Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the little old man.

Thanks, Drew.