PEOPLE LIKE ME DON'T DESERVE TO BE 59!!

Normally by the time a person is 59 he or she has achieved a certain level of self-awareness. For instance, they know what they HAVE ( I call this "personal finance"). They know their PLACE in the world (Let’s tag this "geography). And they know WHO they are (This, we’ll slip this into an envelope marked "Emotional Maturity). Well, I just turned 59, and all I can say in my case is, Oh, WHOOPS! Call the party police! They need to pop my balloons!

How’s this for financial savvy: Whenever the money gurus toss out an expression like "one-tenth of one percent," I have to go to a dark, quiet place so I can grapple with this concept. And I can’t come out of there until I’ve envisioned 100 little squares, one of which has to be divided into ten little pieces. Applied math - oy vey! It’s exhausting. (For all you guppies not yet a half century old, this just in: A "balance transfer" does NOT mean shifting your weight from foot to foot).

Familiarity with spacial relationships vis-à-vis other countries? Just when I finally learned to stop trying to pronounce the Z in Czechoslovakia, Russia and Africa play global pick-up sticks and change the names of their villages and cities, countries and such. Thank God nobody’s tampered with actual land masses in our world and the six continents remain intact!!

The emotional maturity issue has been a tremendous stumbling block for me. I’m still sulking because Earnest McLean and the boys from my seventh grade never ONCE tried to steal my scarf and play keep-away with it while I waited for my school bus. It was always Jeanie Moulis’s scarf! Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie. (Honestly, she wasn’t even that pretty; but she was all we had back then).

Oh, well, as the saying goes, growing old is not for wimps! And no matter how many birthdays we celebrate, somebody’s bound to throw us a special treat of some sort, like pink plastic rollers, or a Chia pet, or dime-store Eau de Toilette called Evenin’ in Paris. And while you’re reminding yourself that it’s not the gift but it’s the thought that counts, you can swallow this idea better if your mouth is full of a huge slab of cake! Hey, speaking of cake . . .

Cake Comments:

"Store bought cake isn’t one-tenth of one percent as good as a Small But Tall," enthused one fan.

"I see London, I see France," sang one patron. "Just give me a Small But Tall, and watch me dance!" And, "You czan’t beat a great czake!!!" he added.

"I eat, therefore I am, " intoned one serious customer, clutching a boxed Small But Tall.


Cake Facts:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 Fannie Mae’s but only 12 Freddie Macks.