With the arrival of June next week, I will enter a new phase of my life. I will be covered by Medicare. Some have asked me, half facetiously, what I will do first when I am on Medicare. Will I have some elective surgeries that I have been putting off, or will I start taking some medicines that I have been holding off on taking? The answer to both of these questions is “no.” The first thing that I am going to do when I go on Medicare is call the Scooter Store.
For the past several years, I have been watching commercials for the Scooter Store, and they have had the desired effect on me. I want a scooter so badly that I can taste it. Sometimes I even dream of scooters.
This desire for a scooter is nothing new with me. When I was a boy, I thought riding a scooter would be the greatest thing in the world. The only problem with this desire for a scooter was that my mother did not share it. In spite of my explaining how I could ride the scooter to school and run other important errands on it, she was not swayed by my presentation. Whenever she talked of scooters and motorcycles, it was always in the context of crippling injuries, death, and destruction.
One time I thought she was softening a little in her opposition to this mode of transportation, but then Lewis Slaughter ruined it all. He bought a motorcycle, promptly wrecked it, and was laid up in the hospital for an extended period of time. This hardened my mother’s attitude toward scooters and motorcycles even more and ruled out any possibility of my getting one.
I’m not sure why I wanted a scooter so badly. I suspect that the idea of riding at the breakneck speed of 30 mph instead of my slow slog on a bicycle was the reason. This desire for greater speed has been a driving force of my generation. We could be called the “fast-food generation.” We eat at fast food places, not because they sell good food, but because they sell “fast” food. But even after the advent of these places, we still had to park our cars, go inside, order, and wait. So, they invented drive-thru fast-food places in order to help us get the food even faster.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver went to the land of the tiny Lilliputians. The Lilliputians had never seen a watch before. After watching Gulliver and his watch for a while, they concluded that his watch was some kind of god that he worshiped. Before he did anything, he consulted the watch.
They may have been correct. Our lives are guided by our timepieces. We do not go long without looking at them. We should be aware of time, but not let it control us. We should redeem it without being slaves to it.
David Bolen and David West will also turn 65 during the month of June. I don’t know if they plan to get scooters or not. If so, we may begin an FBC Scooter Club. Who knows what fun lies ahead for us old-timers?
