Texts, or instant messages are affecting the few brain cells I have left.

Stay with me while I explain this and swing you to my side.

I leave Instant Messaging active on my iPhone cause it’s the wife’s preferred method of communication and sometimes people from work get hold of me that way.

If I could turn it off – I would.

When I was a kid we talked over two tin cans with a string.

Great fun.

Then I got older and people called me on the phone.
That was fine if it was short.

I tried to keep calls to 30 seconds or so.
Unless we were discussing beer or what bar had the most single women that weekend.

Those calls could get to two or three minutes.
Exhausting.

Then people started emailing me.
Way too much.

The delete button became my close friend.

Now they text me.
And it drives me crazy.

Every time one comes through I have visions of 16-year-old girls wandering the mall texting their brains out.

What could they possibly be saying?

“Here I am at Macy’s and I’m looking at shoes. Want a picture?”

Some walk around with the phone to their ear listening to their friend’s breath.

That’s another story for a later time.

I don’t have a problem ignoring instant messages, especially when I’m driving.

But the phone keeps trying to remind me I should run into a utility pole and read it NOW.

Maybe it would be okay if it was sexting, but at my age that’ll never happen.

I probably wouldn’t know how to respond anyway.

The wife sometimes texts me in the middle of rush hour to share how bad the traffic is.

I usually respond with a simple “OK” so she knows I got it.
I’m trying to be polite.

I don’t want to encourage a conversation because she might end up in the trunk of the car in front of her, plus I’m usually doing something at the moment.

She’s the apple of my eye, but it doesn’t work.

More than once she’s texted me from the other room.

It’s really okay to walk down to the other end of the house and see me in person.

Really.
Maybe I’ll get a hug then, too.

Want to stand out from the crowd?

If it can’t be said – completely – in one sentence, do a phone call instead.

Reach out and actually touch someone.

What a concept.

Yes, I feel better.

There’s another wonderful scientific study that been released.

They’re just popping this out this month.

And like the many of those before it, it tells me nothing I didn’t know before.

I must be the smartest person in the world.

This study says different things make us happy depending how old we are.

Yup, they spent money on that.

These scientists rounded up a lot of people for a lot of time to figure this out.

Here’s the results…

If you’re young happiness comes from falling in love, getting your first car, or watching your newborn.

What they didn’t mention is unhappiness follows when your love breaks your heart, you have to start making car payments and your kid starts getting in trouble.

Anyway, back to the report.

As for us old folks…

We supposedly get our happiness from just stopping and smelling the roses.

This is true.
Some old folks I know are happy just to wake up in the morning.

The folks at the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth spent a lot of time finding this out when they could have just asked me.

What they discovered is probably what you knew already, but it’s not official until someone does a study and spends time and money to find out for themselves and then publishes it in some official journal.

Anyway, here’s more…

Young people are happy when they get excited, enthusiastic, and turned on.

Remember “turned on”?
I don’t.

And us old folks are happy when things are calm, peaceful, and not all fired up.

Let’s explain the old folks part since that’s where I am in time and space…

The bones get creaky, it takes longer to do some things, there are too many pills in the medicine chest and people drive us crazy.

But the older you get the more aware of who you are, and you have more time to enjoy the smaller, ordinary things that fill your days.

And yeah, our mortality is our lurking around the corner, which probably explains sniffing things.

The problem with this scientific study is – they also say people are either happy or sad, depending on their personality and disposition.

In simple terms – you are what you are.

Duh.
That’s the part I knew already.

Remember that – you are what you are regardless of how old you are.

Grumpy old people were most likely grumpy young people.

There goes your excuse.

The wife thinks I should get a hearing aid.
I pretend I don’t hear her.

Of course she says that proves her point.

Not really.

There’s a difference between ignoring and not hearing.

I will admit I do have a small hearing deficiency.

It comes when you get older and things get rusty and the moving parts run out of grease.

I have a couple of fans, a lawn mower and one dog in the house like that.

My doctor says the ear is full of stuff with strange names like utricle and saccule and they all move together in mysterious and wonderful ways.

The lady is a scientific genius.

And this stuff gets old just like me.
And when things get old, just like me, they aren’t interested much in moving around, just like me.

Then there’s the small thing of a decade being a disk jockey with my headsets at full volume.

Okay, that can knock a few high frequencies out of my stuff that move.

But I’m not deaf.

Outside of confusing words that star with C, D, E, G, P and sometimes Z, I do fine.
When I have problems with half the alphabet, I might rethink my position.

As long as I’m not in a noisy room, I also do fine.
But nobody can hear anyone in a noisy room anyway.

Stay home and don’t talk to people works great.
There’s a certain Zen happiness in peace and quiet.

But a hearing aid?
Seriously, why would I want that?

What’s it do?
It makes things louder.

I can’t hear you?
Speak louder.

Problem solved and look at all the money I saved.

You’d think this would make her happy because her frugal nature.

Also, I’m showing some fiscal responsibility for once in my life.

Nope.
She wants me to hear every word when she gets into one of her lengthy, go-on-forever stories about she and her girlfriends swapping gossip at lunch, including what they wore, the complete menu and her 3rd grade report about growing beans.

I’d rather buy something shiny with lots of moving parts instead of a hearing aid.
Sticking anything except a finger in my ear sounds weird to me.

Considering the inane stuff some people have to say, a man-toy sounds like a better buy.

If she wants me to hear her, just speak up.

Of course that makes her grumpy.

Too bad I can’t hear her.