The tale of the mail

The Speedway catalog -- my son's -- and "The Scooter Store" advertisement -- with my name on it -- arrived the same day in my mailbox. I was insulted that anyone -- even an automated mailing system somewhere -- thought I needed a personal mobility device instead of hotrod parts! (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette)

My son, Nolan, is home only several days every couple weeks -- he's nine stories up in the derrick of a True Oil drilling rig in northeast Wyoming. He likes it -- it's his mother who's afraid of his heights.

Anyway, his mail still comes to his home, my house. He gets neat magazines and catalogs; I get bills and junk mail.

Wednesday was just such a day. Nolan got a "SPEEDWAY Motors" catalog -- the coolest auto parts and add-ons and blingies for street rods and hot rods and whatever vehicle you'd ever want to soup up.

I got "The Scooter Store."

Now, I'm not "old." I may get older, but I refuse to get "old." But every once in a while, I feel my impending "old age", and my knees (for many year banged around on poles and barrels and once stuck through a plate glass door) won't cooperate. However, Wednesday was not such a day. I was feeling fine -- until the mail arrived.

I was absolutely indignant. How dare someone far, far away decide I don't need a hot rod or parts to soup up my pickup, but that I do need a "personal mobility vehicle."

I called my daughter for sympathy. She'll understand my indignation. Wrong.

Shannon laughed, "Well, Mom, we can always bling up a scooter. Maybe put spinners on the hubcaps. And Craig (my drag-racing son-in-law) can fit it with nitrous for ya." I could hear Craig laughing all the way from Hastings.

Shannon continued, "And you know I can paint some really awesome ghost flames!" Shannon, my favorite daughter no more, has a degree in auto body technology, and loved to paint cars.

Still insisting "I am NOT old," I called a very good friend. No sympathy there either. He tried hard not to laugh out-right, but he kept saying, "Oh, that's funny." "Oh, that's funny." This from a guy who was mistaken a couple years ago for my father!

The response wasn't much better at the Gazette the next morning. Nita laughed, Vera laughed. Debbie chuckled. Dawn clutched the two publications to her chest, threw back her head and laughed and laughed. ' course, all of these people are younger than I am, I admit. Maybe by just a month or two, but younger none the less.

I love old cars; my favorite is a 1959 Chevy Biscayne, with tail fins that mimic art and super-sonic rockets! You know, the big-boat-of-a-car whose front end got to North Platte before the back bumper ever left McCook! I love fast cars -- my favorite driver was Dale Earnhart Sr. I love cars with "quality" loud noise (not just "quantity" noise) -- like my son-in-law's 1972 Chevy Nova dragster.

But some day, I'm going to have to admit that I've inherited the dreaded Gaibler family curse, arthritic knees. My little brother, Tony, got Grandpa's crystal blue eyes -- I got his bad knees!

So, maybe .... I said MAYBE ... someday, if I don't go the knee replacement route, a scooter may be in my future. But wait: How's that going to work walking three big dogs? Hmmm ...

Anyway, if that is what happens -- and I said 'if' -- that personal mobility device had better have bling ... and a NOS system ... and glass packs .... and dual exhaust ... oh, oh, and absolutely awesome ghost flames!

P.S. I really don't mind my age. See, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer two weeks before my 42nd birthday. So, any birthday since then -- 1997 -- means I'm not only one year older, but that I've beaten cancer another year. Yeah! As a bunch of McCook High School boys cheered during "Breast Cancer Awareness Week" -- "Save the Ta-Ta's!"