A new Major….. “Let it go”

I gulp when I say this, but my car is gone from my life. Yes, the old two-seater is no longer in the garage, which now looks like a toothless smile to me. 
I am not sure what I shall do about it, but I was becoming a danger to myself and, more importantly, to others. I couldn’t take the chance of hurting someone just because of my pride, don’t you see?
For instance the other day I was tootling along Douglas Street and about to make a left-hand turn. I examined the road in front and it looked clear as a bell, with just one car in the distance coming towards me in the opposite lane. I turned smartly left as I have done with great agility for more than 60 years, when to my horror I realized I had misjudged the speed and geography of the oncoming vehicle, so that it was almost upon me.
Thankfully the young driver avoided pranging my little car and me, but his language was horrid and sadly richly deserved by yours truly, because I had almost caused a terrible collision because of my diminished senses. It was then that I made up what is left of my mind to give it up, the driving thing, and not put it down to just another happenstance. I was well and truly done with driving anything.
I was telling a few mems at the club the other night about this situation, and said even the best of us should pack it in at 80. In fact I thought it would be an astute idea if on every member’s 80th birthday, a cake with the words “How about the keys?” would be brought out after lunch. I was rudely surprised when a great number (six) of “After Dinner” mints were thrown at me by my fellow clubmen and clubwomen. Rarely have I so misjudged the temperature of an audience before, and I did not like it, I can assure you.
As the muttering crowd dispersed I was left to gather my thoughts and wonder why they had taken the tack they had. I ordered the night’s last martini from a sulky waiter and rubbed my throbbing temples in order to make sense of why the club had turned on my well-thought-out proposal. Nothing. Then my ice-cold fluid arrived and after a melancholy sip it came to me: They are afraid. Yes, fear is what it is, the fear of giving up the last bit of independence of movement, their right and ability to go anywhere.
One of the club chaps who threw a mint at me, the one that hit me a glancing blow on the ear, was Sherman Sorbet, a dedicated driver if there ever was one, but one who sorely needs to stop it at once.
Only last year old Sorbet shot through the main window of a nearby supermarket, taking out the deli section whose pickle expert was in the midst of a short chat concerning the merits or lack thereof of the Hungarian and Swedish varieties, with a slight deviation into the kosher school of thought.
Explosively with glass everywhere, there was Sherman with the expert, now a sort of hood ornament, and both of them covered in brine. The outraged deli employees grabbed the now smelly clubman, who kept shouting, “It was an honest mistake, I thought it was the brake.”
With all the publicity and embarrassment for Sherman, the club laid odds of 10-1 that he would never drive again, but he did. We now ask him to post on the club board his chosen routes for the day so we might avoid them and almost certain death.
It was only last week when we watched Mrs. Hynde-Quarters from the senior reading room window as she took more than an hour to park her car between two white lines in the empty parking lot. In one way it was hilarious, for instance when she shouted at a shadow on the wall, but also bittersweet as well.
We were towers of strength once but no more, and that is only natural. We must learn to leave the stage by walking from it, not driving.

Copyright Christopher Dalton
www.majorscorner.com