No, this is not about how I miss chocolate shakes, cookies, pastries and French fries. I have gotten along without these fascinating and fattening products for a long time. I don’t need them and really don’t want them. Of course, if I met one I wouldn’t be gauche enough to refuse the opportunity to enjoy.

But, I miss a lot and that is because of how I am constructed, a lot of it is history and most of all, it is predilection. I miss out on a lot that is going on in the world and have missed many experiences that would have made my life more interesting and fulfilling.  But, you can’t argue with the past – it is dead and gone except where it keeps on interfering with the way you live now.

For instance: I miss a lot because I am interested in things that seem to interest only me.  I spent a lot of time living in utopia, the many varieties of which became the subjects of two scholarly works.  I also liked to build and work with marionettes and built puppet theatres, put on shows and gave courses in how to do what I did for many years along with working at the same time on a couple of jobs to make a living.  But, that is just me and the way I lived my life. A consequence is that by concentrating on these things I missed out on a lot of other things.

I do not drink.  I would love to get lost in an alcoholic fog once or twice but I get sick and do not enjoy the taste. It is a personal preference that I choose the chocolate shake over the shot of whiskey. I also don’t do sports.

I love to sing and would be happy if I could learn to sight read music musically so that I could play instruments along with singing. The fact that I can’t hear causes me to miss a lot.  When I sang in a chorus I would miss the instruction to pick up on: what?  I didn’t hear it and spent a lot of time catching up.

Now that I am old (I will be 80) in two years I find that I can’t walk (partially because I have two 3 month old knees), ride a bicycle outdoors (I’m afraid that I will fall off as I have done in the past and must protect these two knees) and am not able to heave furniture around or get down on the floor to fix things that are down there. My health is good but the body that goes along with it isn’t the same one that could do all those things for so many years.

Perhaps the most important impediment to my being aware of things, people, ideas and movements is my contrarianism.  This is a perversity, I know, but I do not march to the same drummer everyone else seems to hear (remember, I can’t hear – even with both hearing aids in my ears). I miss a lot and there are other reasons and other things but I just had to be perverse enough to write this down today.