‘Who determines what is sane and what is not?’

This scribe was a little under the weather this week but is fine now so did not contact any of the OFs. This scribe did call a couple just to see how they were doing and only got to talk to a machine.

The machine on the OFs’ behalf advised they would return the call as soon as they returned. These calls did not come.

So, as of right now, there is nothing to report that would be new; however, there is always the old notebooks where the scribe can research if anything happened a few years ago. Well, here it is and it was when times were more normal, if anything can be called normal.

We have one OF who maintains we can’t call anyone crazy; this OF thinks the ones we call crazy may be the sane ones. This OF would counter anyone mentioning the strange behavior of someone with the comment that maybe running around naked is the sane thing to do and wearing clothes in the insane thing to do.

This OF would always respond, “Who determines what is sane and what is not?” That is always a good question to get any conversation started.

Many a psychologist’s and psychiatrist’s job would depend on the answer to that question.

This brings the scribe to relate that, for some years in his art class, there were at one time four or five members in the field of mental behavior, or teaching the “unteachable.” A variation of this topic would occasionally pop up as they just routinely talked as they were painting.

One thing the scribe noticed was that never once did the professionals mention cases or people — it was all so general. Just like stories and topics of conversations that a group of mechanics, or electricians, or plumbers would have if there were a group of them talking in a hobby group outside of their trade situation, say a book club, or writers’ class, or a local band, or orchestra, or for that matter a meeting of “old men.”

Weather redux

One of the notes this scribe ran across was for December 2010. It was a carbon copy of this exact time of the weather in 2020. The OFs in 2010 were complaining how cold it was on Tuesday, compared to the days before when it was in the forties and fifties.

As time goes by, nothing seems to change — not even the weather. The OFs then were 10 years younger and more of them went out hunting, and 10 years ago they were talking about how nice it was to be out in the woods even if they did not get a chance to shoot anything.

That would be true today with the same words, only adding 10 years to many of the OFs and getting the gun out of the case would be more of an effort than going out. Also, there is the matter of getting dressed, and by the time all that was done it would be almost time to come home.

If the OF now didn’t have a YF with him to haul back whatever he bagged, the OF would be almost dead by the time he got whatever it was to the truck or car.

The sport of hunting is not every OF’s cup of tea. One OF at one time said he would really be leery going into the woods with these OFs and a loaded gun. One would have a cane in one hand, and the gun slung over the shoulder of the other arm.

His partner OF wouldn’t be any better. He would be carrying a gun but only one eye worked, and that one was not that good. Who knows what ailments would beset the others.

One, because of arthritis, would have to drag a leg. The OF thought, with a hunting party like this, the deer and turkey are pretty safe but the hunters would be the ones in peril.

Also in the archives of this scribe’s notebooks is a notation of the OFs commenting more than once on the beauty of the outdoors in the Northeast during hunting season and the fall with one OF observing: Why do we appreciate it so much more as we get older — and by older, the OF meant older.

The OF said, when they were younger, the seasons were the seasons and just another part of the year. But, in their sixties, the OFs began to notice the beauty of winter, the smells of spring, the sounds of summer, and the whole pot of senses in the fall.

The scribe did notice a note from the OMOTM discussing what it would be like with a year of constant weather, and the word “boring” in parentheses. The scribe seems to remember most of the OFs saying they would be bored out of their skulls if the seasons did not change.

Even as challenging as that can be, with heat in the one-hundreds or snow up to the OFs’ eyeballs, the OFs would rather put up with this than have it 72 degrees and sunny every day.

One OF commented he had constant temperatures like this for over a year when he was stationed on Guam. For a while, it was nice but then it got just too darn hot, and he longed for a snowflake.

Soon the OFs will have to start singing their theme song: 

Oh, the weather outside is frightful,

And our joints are not delightful,

Since it’s got so dang cold, 

We feel old, we feel old, we feel old!