I was woe was me when when I'm getting old, you know. Hello. So it's last Friday, and I start to feel, you know, a little like, am I am I getting sick? I don't know. But, you know, the nose is a little runny. Yeah. I got I don't wanna get sick because Saturday is Christmas for me, or in this case, last Saturday because my brother goes out of town. And so I try to get we try to get everyone together, which is hard now because my great nieces and nephew are teenagers.
At least he yeah. I I would say 2 out of 3 at this point. And so we know it's just a matter of time until it's like, oh, do I have to go? You know, that's gonna be there. And regardless, right, you only have so many Christmases when they're little. And I know 16 isn't little, especially when he's like, he's gonna be taller than me probably this coming year. So I was looking forward to it, but it's Friday before that, and I start to get
the sniffles. And I'm like, oh, that's weird because I don't really get sick a whole lot. And so I start popping vitamins and drinking, what are airborne, that kind of stuff. And I wake up on Saturday, and my eyes are really hot. You know what I mean? There's just aches everywhere. And I got a I got a radio show to do. And so I'd slept in, and I had about 45 minutes until it was time to hit go. And so I take a quick shower, go through my show, but I'm I'm I'm just not I'm
not firing on all cylinders, you know, and I'm like, okay. And I occasionally had to blow my nose and things like that. And it dawns on me about 3 fourths of the way through the show that my whole body hurts. And I was like, oh, this is not good. Because I'm supposed to go to Christmas in about, you know, 2 hours. And I'm like, man, I haven't felt this bad since. And I was like, oh, since the last time I had COVID. Because COVID just everything hurts.
And I was like, alright. Well, I get done with my show. I publish it in record time, and I'm like, I've got an hour. And that will give me then I'll have like a half hour to get to my brother's house. And I was like, no, right. Somehow I'm gonna take a nap. And mysteriously, miraculously, I should better say, I'm gonna beat this thing and be able to do Christmas because if you've ever seen any Christmas, you know, special, it's always like, yay, Christmas is coming. What? Oh,
no. And then the next one is like, do you think that'll work? And then it's always Merry Christmas to all and to all good night. And so I am in the do you think that will work phase? Do you think, you know, a half hour nap will make me completely well? I don't know. But we got to try to save Christmas. Well, it works on TV, but it didn't work on me. And so I call my brother and I'm like, dude, I am I am not well. I go, I'm probably gonna go get a COVID test, but I got presents for
the kids. Yada, yada, yada. Go take my test. Yeah. Not in you know how sometimes on the COVID test, you're kind of like, well, if I look at it in the light, I might have cope no, this was like you have COVID. And I was like, okay. So we we did a thing where we more or less exchange things on the front porch outside, had a mask on, you know, the whole 9 yards. And on the way home, man, I was like, man, like, I've been looking forward to Christmas all month, and
I just missed it. And so they gave me cookies, of course, you know, and my great nieces and nephews bought me some things. So that was cool. But I was like, and it was kind of a weird ending because I just had a friend of mine that popped in out of town, kind of out of nowhere. He's my best friend, kind of a surprise visit wasn't planned, but we got to hang out a little bit. And look,
we're both 59. And we're kind of doing the old you remember when this was, you know, and this doesn't well, I can't we're just complaining about getting old. And I was telling him, like, man, I said it's bad enough that my right knee works about 90% of the time going up and downstairs. I'm like, but now I got tendonitis, better known as tennis elbow. And I'm like,
my right side of my body is just shutting down. And I'm like, I need to get in better shape, but it's hard to get in better shape when, you know, you can't get your body up to to get in better shape. And they just wah wah wah. Right? Now we had a great time. We always do. And so that then, you know, he leaves. I get sick, and and then I miss Christmas. And I was really having quite the pity party, especially on Saturday. I just Saturday Sunday just felt
horrible. And I saw Jamie Foxx's special on Netflix. Now if you're a person does not enjoy cursing, it's it's funny, but that man likes to drop m f a lot. In fact, his nickname is, Jamie m f Fox and, you know, but it was funny. There are definitely some parts in it that were funny. But I'm stealing this idea from him because come Monday and really what is today? Thursday. So probably Tuesday.
I am starting to feel better. And it dawned on me then, probably yesterday, Wednesday, I was, like, oh, instead of having my whole body ache, I now can feel my tennis elbow. Like, nothing else really hurts except my elbow. And I was happy to just have my elbow where before I was woe was me when when I'm getting old, man. You know? And, Jamie Foxx talked about this that he said, you know, one point, he was getting mad at God. Like, why why is this happening to me? The the, the crime doesn't
fit the punishment. And he said and and God blessed him with a with a stroke. And that's kinda how I feel. Like, I'm actually happy now that I can I can go up and down the steps and not everything hurts? My elbow, which is for the record kind of getting a little better, and my knee is kind of a little better probably because I haven't done anything for a week. But maybe that's
what I was supposed to do. But I never would have thought of COVID as a gift, but maybe this was the gift I got for Christmas was the gift of COVID because I'm not complaining anymore about my body because I'm like, alright. I'm back to the same crappy state I was before this whole thing started. And maybe now this will give me a little inspiration to, maybe skip on the Dairy Queen a little and start to really realize that your body is a gift and you
only got one. Like, I know we all think we can go, you know, $6,000,000 man and replace everything and inject your fat in your butt and everything else we're doing that makes everybody look like a chipmunk. But I'm not doing any of that. Can't afford any of that stuff. And, I was like, you know what? I think COVID was kind of a a gift in a way for me to realize it could be a whole lot worse. You know, I always
say that on this show, it's gonna get better. And in some cases, the way it gets better is by not getting any worse. And so I just thought I would hop on here and go, what did you get for for Christmas? I got the gift of COVID, and it was a really, really good gift. And so if you're in a spot and I realized, man, the holidays are nasty on your brain at times. You know, it's a lot of reminiscing, and that's what
me and my buddy were doing. We had a lot of reminiscing and things I had not thought about in a very long time, which made me laugh a lot. And and there is that's powerful stuff. That's why there's so many things in these Christmas movies that make you miss the past. You you reminisce about these things and it's, you know, pulls on your heartstrings and things like that. And that's very powerful stuff.
And I made notes. I'm like, hey, anytime you can get somebody thinking about if if I could say something like I watched a thing on Amazon. It was Christmas, I think, through the decades. It was on Amazon Prime, and they had, like, the seventies. They had Evel Knievel and the little like, the first handheld electronic football game. All these things I grew up with, and it just makes you remember those things. And that's powerful. The one thing was funny yesterday, last
night, my appetite, unfortunately, has come back. I dropped £4 in 3 days. I was like, alright, COVID. Maybe I just I'm gonna go around and find somebody who's sick and just start licking them. I'm like, I need to drop some weight, but it's coming back. And, but I, you know, I Googled getting over COVID thinking, oh, this could be interesting. But it did say one of the things that grandma used to give you was chicken noodle soup, and it's actually really good because of the pepper in
the broth. It opens up your nasal passages. The the broth is good on your throat. The chicken is full of protein, and they didn't say what the salts for, but nonetheless and so I had not and when I say chicken noodle soup, like, I have chicken noodle soup in the cupboard, but I found a can of, like, red and white Campbell's chicken noodle, like, the kind where you dump it in a bowl, fill up the can with water, and dump that in, and then you nuke it for 2 and a half minutes. And I don't
know how old that I should have looked. I don't know how old this this chicken noodle soup was because I have thing like chunky mange chicken noodles and vegetables with rice and blah blah. You know? No. This was just noodles, a half of a, you know, a fleck of chicken in there, and a bunch of salt. And I was amazed at the smell and but mainly the taste. So I'm sitting in my living room watching some bad Hallmark movie because those are easy to sleep
through. And the minute I put the spoon to my mouth because I haven't had chicken noodle soup in probably 50 nah. 45 years. It's been a long time. It's not really one of my top things, but it was one of those things that for me, either my mom or my grandma was feeding me. And so there were times when I would spend the night at my grandma's house and it'd be cold out or something like that. And she'd like, here, here's some
chicken noodle soup. But the one that really got me was as I put that spoon in my mouth, I swear as I'm looking down, like, at the noodles and stuff in this bowl, I really expected it. When we grew up, we had these pink or black bowls that used for cereal or whatever. In this case, chicken noodles. And I really expected to see that bowl. It's like I went there so incredibly strong,
you know, and I was like, wow. And I just expected, like, almost open up my eyes and I would have then flipped to the other side of the living room which used to be a sofa. Like, it just I was amazed almost like a weird flashback, you know, like in movies where somebody does something like, I think I'm remembering something and it's like and I was like, wow, that was just
bizarre because it's like, I know what's going on. It's a chemical that somehow stimulating something in the brain and the brain is going down a path that it hasn't gone down in a while. But I just remember, like, man, I am there. And I could I could see my grandma's fireplace and the plastic on the couch, you know, all that stuff was weird. So I'm gonna have to get me some more chicken noodle soup whether I'm sick or not. It was good. I was like, I should eat more of this. But, nonetheless,
getting a lot of interesting experiences. Right? One of the things that ex wife number 2 and I would say, we would get ourselves into something, And we just look at each and go, this is gonna be a fun adventure. And that's just the kind of way we looked at it. One that was really interesting, again, kind of this time of year was we're on the freeway. We're we're coming home, but we're not there yet by any means.
And her truck did not have a working, you know, right where we're going as soon as I say this, it did not have a working gas meter. So you never knew how much gas was in the car. You kinda kept tracking your brain and stuff like that. So we're on the freeway, And we like the engine stops and we're like, oh, crap. We know what this means. And so luckily, there's nobody in front of me and we were coming right up to an exit ramp. And I'm here to tell you I rolled
down the exit ramp, which luckily was downhill. At the bottom, there was a a stop sign, but there wasn't much traffic there. So I get to the bottom. There's nobody coming, so I just run the stop sign and turn right into a gas station and then rolled up and stopped right at the pump. And I was like, now that was a fun adventure. That was that was definitely different. And so whatever is going on in your world around the holiday time, so I'm hoping it's good.
And, it's good to remember those old memories. Sometimes those are a little painful, but it might just be a fun adventure. And the gift you wanted may not be what you thought, but it might be your most treasured gift this year. So hang in there. Until next time, it's gonna get better.