Excuses

Once again, I've been reprimanded by my reader.  You might think, why does he even care about writing if his blog only has one reader.  I don't think that.  I like to think that one day, millions of years from now, some young archeologist might just unearth this blog out in the middle of nowhere and carefully dust it off and find the rich and powerful words of an ancient senior citizen from the land of Usa.  That young archeologist might be touched by these words, might even write a book about it.  And finally I would get my writing published.


I've been told that I haven't written in here for four months.  Really?  Shoot.  Well I have an excuse.  Actually I have dozens of excuses.  I'm a college teacher.  The class I teach is one of the first ones you're required to take as you begin your college career.  It's supposed to make you prepared to tackle future classes and with some students it does just that.  With other students it serves as the exercise that helps them decide that maybe welding would be a good profession.  Or maybe they could be a hair dresser. 


Anyway, I get a lot of excuses.  I tell people that my class is particularly dangerous because every semester someone dies.  Every term I get at least one student who comes to me to explain that the reason they haven't done a damned thing the entire four months is because their * (replace star with grandfather, grandmother, cousin, uncle, etc.)  died.  And what can they do to pass the class. 


I get excuses often.  I tell them -  it's actually printed in the syllabus - I do not grade excuses.  I may rate them, but they do not get grades for them.  In some classes of the past I've given glue-on stars for good excuses.  Red stars for decent excuses and gold stars for stellar ones.  I give a black star for lame excuses.  I explain to them that their future boss does not pay for excuses, just results.


So as you can see, I have many excuses to offer as to why I haven't been writing in here.  If you really need one, I'll ask a student to send you a good one.


Oh wait, here's one now:
I'm old.  Sitting here in this chair typing words hurts.  I've had my back rebuilt and that doesn't take away the pain.  It just makes the pain less satanic.  I can tolerate the pain now when I really couldn't before the surgery.  But that surgery didn't stop me from getting older.  Getting old is wonderful, it's very cool, but don't take that old body with you.  When it starts falling apart it gets irritating.  Lately I've had knee problems.  I cleaned the bathtub about three weeks ago and when I stood up I suddenly hurt like the dickens in my back and knee.  It didn't go away next day.  Or the next day either.  So I tried soaking and salves and stretches and all that rot.  Nothing.  My knee got extremely bad and swollen and numb and my back was screaming in pain.  When I couldn't sleep from the pain I decided to return to the surgeon because me and Ms. Donna started thinking that maybe I screwed up a screw.  See they put screws in my back a couple of years ago so maybe I messed one of them up.  Then I thought, well do we want to go to a surgeon?  I mean, if I had knocked a screw loose, shouldn't I see a psychiatrist?


Well anyway, we went there and they x-rayed.  Back is fine.  I have "end stage osteo-arthritis" in my knee.  Bone on bone.
I didn't know that.  It hurt sometimes but what the heck we are human and we hurt.
So anyway.  Now I have to go back to the land of knives and drugs and get a new knee.  They say I can put it off for as long as I can stand it and that's what I'm doing now.  But I sure don't want to have it done in the summer because that means no boating.  So I may do it soon.  We'll see.


So anyway, how's that for an excuse. 
I'd say it deserves at least a red star.