Do we get softer, more sentimental, less intelligent and less able to think clearly as we age? (Asking for a friend.)
Actually I’m asking for, or about, my wife. She was once hard-headed, tough-minded and decisive. As a lawyer facing a combative witness during cross examination her eyes narrowed to slits that would have done a rattlesnake proud.
But too many years of Hallmark TV specials and televised nonsense starring cuddly polar bears and giraffes tumbling about the open seas in a polka dot rowboat with baby donkeys and pink squirrels have taken a toll.
She once donated money to Judicial Watch and the ACLU; now she sends checks to “The Fuzzy Bunny Rescue Team” and “Help Stop Bulldozers Rolling in the General Direction of Animal Shelters” organizations.
TV ads are soaked in funereal, sentimental violin music, begging donations to a P.O. Box in the Cayman Islands. Trophy has writer’s cramp and a gluey tongue from sending checks and licking stamps.
Now, instead of viewing the world with a gimlet eye, she sees everything through rose-colored glasses lightly rinsed in rose-colored wine. Plus she’s getting older. She’ll be 39 next time around.
Why do old people fall prey to these preposterous pitches demanding they hurry to the aid of a cute kitten in Des Moines while their very own husband is in need of donations to cover expenses at the Forest Club?
I blame calendars. Calendars take a heavy toll, loaded as they are with a dozen annual photos of cuddly teddy bears, Koala bears, Panda bears, Meerkats, Siamese cats, cuddly kittens and Golden Retriever puppies romping through piles of autumn leaves and waves of tall grass.
So cute.
Calendar peddlers prey on sentimental fools susceptible to 12 gooey reminders a year, each of which appeals to long-dormant maternal instincts.
These images tickle dopamine reserves in frontal cortex reservoirs producing exaggerated, elevated, dangerous levels of serotonin. Coupled with medicinal doses of wine and moderate amounts of CBD chewies, outcomes are predictable, nearly inevitable, and soon my wife is transferring more of our hard-earned lottery winnings to endangered Mosquito Habitats in the Rain Forests of southern Wyoming.
And now comes Christmas, highest on the sappy sloppy seasonal sentimental scale, which brings us directly to Christmas Cards that have gone from mangers and the Star of Bethlehem to happy holiday pix of dogs wearing Santa hats while hauling a sleigh through the skies.
Ho Ho Ho, my pink buttocks.
The rest of the year greeting cards come festooned with birthday cakes, balloons and streamers surrounded by Golden Retriever puppies wielding forks, eating cake and wearing silly caps. Also in the gift card rotation: cartoon penguins hoping you get well soon, flocks of flamingoes clinking martini glasses and saluting your big graduation, more puppies, more kittens, more cuteness and more of you, yourself, gasping “Awww!” right out loud.
Then, St. Patrick’s Day cards. Don’t ask.
It all converges in a hyper-sweetened brain-numbing, emotional overloading diet we are not meant to withstand. And we don’t.
So we give up and settle in to absorb more panda bears on ferris wheels, demands for money to save indoor goldfish habitats, more cowbell and more signs instructing us to “Live, Laugh, Love!” while holding three cuddly Black Widow spider cubs in our laps.
Going, Or Else Gone
1) Magazines with Jennifer Aniston on the cover.
2) Sneakers hanging by their laces over telephone wires.
3) The “Me Too!” movement.
4) Cannabis sativa and other semi-exotic strains.
5) Dewey Decimal system card catalogues..
6) Bulimia.
7) Nickels.
8) Robo Calls.
9) Gun racks in pickup trucks.
10) Packets of baseball cards, with gum.
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