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Health & Fitness

Life, The Rain And Flying High

I flew on my first airplane ride back in 1972, two years
short of becoming forty. My friend’s baby flew when he was two months old to
see his other

Grandmother in New Orleans. Little Will was thirty-eight
years earlier in his flying time.

I figured if Mom could fly her first trip when she was fifty-eight,
I could beat her by twenty years.

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We flew to England, the plane was empty, and the food fairly
good, the snacks pretty tasty, I had the whole three seats to spread out on and
to try and sleep and my husband did the same.

It was a seven hour trip and the time went by fast. We
arrived in London about eight in the morning and it was about in our real time
two in the morning. We saw the hustle and bustle of London and we went to sleep
right away. Other travelers in our group checked in to the hotel, threw their
baggage down and went sightseeing. We were still young, younger than many on
the trip, but we decided to go to sleep. We awakened about two in the afternoon
London time and then we were raring to sightsee. At dinner, the early ones were
dragging their bodies because they had jumped into viewing the city at once and
we two took a rest and we were bright and alert and eager to do things.

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When we went on our first bus ride, we were warned that the
streets were full of pickpockets and we were to hold our purses tight to our
chests and the men should have their wallets in their front pockets. No one in
our group was pickpocketed.

We saved that event for four years ago, when my husband was
pickpocketed in an elevator in a medical building. He did not know it had
happened, it was winter time, he had on a heavy coat and he did the
unthinkable. He had his wallet full of many credit cards and kept it in his
back pocket which is a no-no. When we arrived home from the doctor’s office,
there was a message on the phone from the Visa Company saying that an unusual
amount of activity had happened in the last thirty minutes and they were
wondering if it was us or a robber.

He looked for his wallet and then we realized he had helped
two men on the elevator going up when one said his arm was stuck in the open
door. The other one gently picked his pocket and they went on and in thirty
minutes they had charged in four stores, Sears, Walmart, Home Depot and a TV store.
They had spent twenty-five hundred dollars charged to our Visa. In Sears they
had the nerve to buy a diamond bracelet and a policy to cover its repair in my
husband’s name. No one had checked the handwriting on the card to see if it
matched what it should have been. They even spelled his first name of Jerome
wrong on the Sears purchase and policy of repair.

It took lots of time to straighten things out with about
four credit cards they had gotten with the Visa one. We felt as if we had been
violated, they took the pictures of the grandchildren he had in there and
pictures he had of himself when he was in the Korean War so many years ago. We
felt for weeks like they were watching us and knew all about us from his cards,
his driver’s license and his photos of him and the family.

So in London, no one touched us, right here in an elevator
where my husband helped the injured man get his hand that was so called stuck
in the door, while the two were robbing him. It is a scary feeling; we got
ourselves an identity card policy, where we pay them to monitor our cards, bank
accounts and etc. for a monthly fee. If any unusual activity, we are notified
at once. He no longer carries his wallet in his back pocket. He no longer helps
anyone on an elevator, he no longer carries more than one card and he longer
believes in being a good guy on an elevator.

If I had been there, and someone had even breathed on me, I
would have screamed. He did not feel their touch, they were simply adept at
doing it and raised up his heavy winter coat with such ease, it was not felt at
all.

My friend, a senior in Washington State, Steven Behr is a
ballroom dancer like I and we are and he says this “how old would you be if you
did not know your REAL AGE? He says he would be sixty-two.” I would say that
some nights and or days, I would be forty-two and a half. This would be on
nineteen seventy-six on December twenty-first.

Other days, I would say I would be over sixty-five and that
would be pretty good two. A Verizon technician in Costa Rica said on the phone
to me several weeks ago, when he was helping me get the computer to work again,
“You sound like you are thirty-five. I said no way and he said OK no more than
forty-five.” I said “seventy-nine in two months.”

He was amazed, he himself was twenty-one.

So it is nice to be almost seventy-nine in four weeks and
some say you look too young to have a twenty-one year old grandson and the
technician said my voice was forty-five.

Whether it is true or not, I look back to when I was forty
and the children were thirteen and nine and I was married for fourteen years.
Life was so different then, money was harder to come by, to save, easy to spend
it all and live from paycheck to paycheck and looking forward to better
financial times and always hoping for good health for our parents. My Dad was
gone when I was thirty. Gasoline for the automobile was about sixty-nine cents
or lower per gallon. You did not get it yourself; a man did it for you and
washed your windows too.

 

There is a saying that says: “From morning’s first light to
evening’s last star, always remember how special you are. Just as the
caterpillar transforms into a magnificent butterfly we too are in a process of
becoming our highest selves through a journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance,
as we learn to spread our wings. You are still gliding through each day with
grace.”

I say we can all do that at any age and even if we are over
forty, over sixty-five and older, we can still fly with hope and happiness.

I may have been thirty-eight when I flew on an airplane for
the first time and I have flown all over the world since then, but I stopped
flying on a plane in nineteen eighty-six.

I have seen a lot of countries, been on three cruises and
seen most of the important places in the world. Now I do my ‘flying’ here at
home in my various activities and through my writing.

There is a saying "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it is about learning  to dance in the rain."

I am still a moving butterfly and now where I move or fly is
still exciting and exhilarating; whatever you do or wherever you go, you are
still flying high and soaring up to the sky with joy at the age you are and the
age you think you can be. Always remember how special you are and you will stay
exceptional and extraordinary.

 

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