I really enjoy conversations with my new best friend ChatGPT where I was recently very simply directed to some detailed information I needed about my loaner from the Subaru dealership. (There’s no longer a users’ book in the glove box, and I needed to pop open the fuel door.) However, some people are really scared about AI, and I can understand that. Just look what can be created with almost no skill at all.

About once a month, I drive over the river to the other part of town where I lived for thirty years. It’s really the same town, but it seems like another one to me. And like a different life.  I lived in the same house there for 26 years which is the congest I ever lived in a house.

When I was little, we moved all over southern Oklahoma every few years as Daddy”s work moved.  He worked for a petroleum company that was laying pipelines all across there.  The longest I ever lived anyplace then was in a little town called Ringling.  It had about 1200 people in it. Fourth grade through ninth.

I was pretty much an only child, so I planned to raise a large family in one house forever.  Funny how things work out.

Anyway, across the bridge where I used to live, I still know where to find everything.  I know where to buy an expensive loaf of white bread once a year to eat tomato sandwiches for a week.  I know where to go to a softball field behind Trader Joe’s once a year to pick up sweet Italian plus off the ground.  I did those two things today.  And I know every tree I planted at 1880 and drive through the alley there and talk to them,  Those redwoods remember me and they will be there long after I have stopped driving by.

Quote from Ted Lasso (Season 2, Episode 2): “Old people are so wise. They’re like tall Yodas.”   We old folks have  lived a long time.  We’ve made a lot of mistakes and learned from them.  Sadly, most younger people have to make the same mistakes themselves and learn the hard way.

On a much greater scale, those who do not know history are damned to repeat it.  I wish presidential candidates had to stand an oral exam on the Constitution.  The current POTUS is in my age group.  He exhibits no wisdom and little knowledge of history and no understanding of the Constitution. His language reminds me of that of a junior high school bully whose mother should have washed his mouth out with soap. This old school teacher would surely like to give him a good talking-to.