The Endgame
Newsletter #113 - It's not easy being me: a guest column by David Wolinsky
White Rock, British Columbia, July 13, 2025
It’s not easy being me, by David Wolinsky. (David is author of The Day the Rains Came, a collection of short stories, and the-soon-to-be-published Road Boss, about his friend and business partner Martin Kramer, road/concert/production manager of 225 of the past century’s most famous entertainment personalities.)
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
(Paul McCartney, John Lennon)
It’s not easy being me. Forget about sixty-four, or as I tend to think of people of that age, kids. I recently celebrated my eighty-fourth birthday, if celebrate is the correct term, as in “I thought I had lost my keys but I celebrated when I found them in the refrigerator’s vegetable drawer.”
A friend recently sent me a list of items from days of yore, ice cube trays, an outhouse, playing cards clipped to the spokes of your bicycle etc., with the caption “If you remember these,….. you are OLD.” Sadly, I’m near eidetic so I had no difficulty remembering these items as well as every other significant event in my life dating back to age three, so I’m well aware I’m past my “sell by” date and don’t need any reminders. But I suppose there’s good news for any of you out there under similar time constraints.
How can you possibly appreciate unlimited television channels unless you’ve lived through one or possibly two channels which went off the air at midnight? Or the ability now to just tell your TV to change channels when once you had to get up out of your comfortable chair to do it yourself? Not to mention waiting half-an-hour for a cab instead of fifteen Ubers competing to get to your door in under three minutes.
I can remember waking up fifty, sixty, and seventy years ago and thinking “It’s time to get up,” as opposed to now every morning when I get up thinking “Wow, I’m still here.”
When I first arrived in White Rock twenty years ago, when taking my daily walk on the beautiful Promenade along the Pacific, I would say good morning to the dozen or so of my friends and relatives who had predeceased me. Of course, I can’t be sure they heard me, but it was my way of keeping in touch. Twenty years later I am now up to seventy-eight on that dearly departed list.
One other matter. I am a compendium of complexities, some positive, most negative. As I mentioned previously, I am eidetic which means I remember almost everything I’ve read, seen, heard or been taught. Which also means that school was very easy for me. On the other hand, I’m lazy and was never interested in excelling in school as those at the top of the class were rarely popular, so although I could always pass with relative ease, I never tried for more than that. Which also meant I never studied until the night before the exam, and usually suffered from angst in case for whatever reason this didn’t work out. I was also weight challenged during my school years and was never athletically gifted. Which brings me to last night.
Every June, which was always final exam time, while most of you dream about old love affairs, winning the lottery, or travelling to Hawaii, I have nightmares about having to write a final exam the next day for which I haven’t studied and I’m not ready. Last night I was trying to recall Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, a work which I have never read and know nothing about but which I was certain I was going to be examined on. At the same time, I was in the middle of a high school football game, playing centre and being repeatedly assaulted, I’m guessing because I had a Covid booster shot two days ago and my arm and shoulder still hurt.
All of which brings me back to what I mentioned earlier. It’s not easy being me.
*****
Some reader comments on Newsletter #112 (“We still want to rock!”)
From Bob Rae: “Walkers and rockers. I get it.”
Naomi Duguid writes: “One of my favourite things is dancing with friends of all ages. Pre- COVID we had an annual dancing party a lovely joyous mix of people connecting with themselves and each other...”
From Julian Porter: “My memory of dancing was a Miss Van Valkenburg. It didn’t take. I have no sense of rhythm or gracefulness of foot. I have my suspicions about the author’s suggestion of his smoothness on the floor, his boulevardier shuffle.”
Karin Turkington: “I love to dance, but I can't imagine going to a club at my age (66). I'm uninterested in the atmosphere that I used to enjoy as a teenager. Before the world shut down for the 'C' word I had discovered 5 rhythms dance. There is no drinking, no chatting, no hooking up, etc. You go to move your body freely to music that is designed and choreographed to move you through different intensities—rhythms. It's a form of healing through letting your body be free. A moving meditation—perfect for those of us who prefer not to be stationary while meditating on the present moment.”
Arlene Perly Rae writes: “My favourite Steve Miller Band song is Dance Dance Dance. It starts ‘My grandpa he’s 95. He keeps on dancing he’s still alive. My grandma she’s 92. She loves to dance and sing some too. I don’t know but I’ve been told if you keep on dancing you’ll never grow old. Come on darlin put a pretty dress on. We’re gonna go out tonight…’”
Pam Purves has the last word: “I want to die dancing!”
Praise for my new book continues to pour in, particularly from the United Kingdom:
From Hugh Thomson in the Lake District: “All Remaining Passengers has just reached Loweswater so, despite age and infirmity, I now have something to look forward to.”
From Gillian in Leamington Spa: “The book is greater than the sum of its parts.”
And Ralph Frapp, from Luton, Bedfordshire, asks: “What is all this stuff?”
In high school I thought that getting more than 51 was a waste of time - or as I would say today - suboptimal. I would walk into exams having done no work, read nothing, and having skipped many classes. While sixty years later I never have anxiety dreams about being unprepared for an exam, I do have anxiety dreams about missing airplanes, although in real life I have actually missed several planes with no lasting consequences. Go figure!
I have to love RF’s comment - it made me laugh. I’m attending my friend’s 70th later today and gifting him your book. There’s no way we could have guessed that we’d be there and others potentially on the guest list wouldn’t, even six months ago. It’s a very contingent place we inhabit these days. It may always have been, but didn’t seem so.
I had started this comment thinking about failure dreams and almost forgot to mention them.
Although I practised medicine for many years, I still occasionally wake up having lived anxious scenarios of attending exams with no preparation and little hope of success. It’s part of the human condition or psyche as prey animals I have always supposed: to be endlessly anxious. Anyway, what is all this stuff?
(Aberdeen, UK)