You call this a blizzard, young fella?

Do you realize there were Rockettes on stage long before there was any Rock on stage? Practically all of the girls in my online group of mostly post-cribbage folks, all diagnosed with a form of parkinsonism called multiple system atrophy or OPCA, would have been Rockettes at the Radio City Music Hall if they had not been distracted by poetic marriages and kids with Guinness IQ and, up to a point, athletic talents of a Tiger.

We have traded thoughts about this during our daily emailings, we 12-steppers in the U.S. and Canada, the U.K. and Australia, wherever somebody might be addressing an incurable disease with an incurable spirit. We are the only 12-steppers whose steps, viewed from a sufficient distance, suggest a bunch of Rockettes dancing at maximum flexuosity. We have our own choreography for the 12 steps.

Today is special to the Rocker-etts as we men of a certain age are known. Today everybody is talking about our favorite subject, the weather. It is 19 F. as I write, with blustery snow and bitter cold in the forecast. If you see an excessively mature gentleman wobbling toward you today, be nice and let him tell you about the "worse day than this" he remembers. Let him tell you about shoveling coal or chopping logs.

This is like an early Christmas for us, and we know who Santa Claus is--he's the weather man. No time for checkers today!

Wisdom of the Aged made simple

An American man qualifies for full Social Security benefits on his 65th birthday. Few know that after 20 years he qualifies for Unsocial Security benefits: Whatever he remembers about long-ago sports events, political arguments and his appeal to females, is good enough; it is his right to be as goofy as though he were a member of Congress.

Radio talk shows are credited with inventing the seven-second delay in broadcasting comments by callers who might be creative in the use of license-busting words of four letters and up. Actually this emulates the long-standing seven-second delay in what is said to an octogenarian and the moment the octogenarian hears it, sometimes called the in-one-ear-out-the-other syndrome. That’s why you know so few 80-year-olds named Speedy.