Jeff Whitten, local columnist

This is another column made up of the sum of its parts, along with a tangle of tangents and ditch full digressions. I tweaked it, too.

Up first, I turned 65 the other day, so now I’m officially old as dirt and nowhere is this more evident than in my need for a stick to walk even the shortest distances. But a new hip is coming in 2027, perhaps, and then I will be back to jumping up and down on the nearest trampoline with the rest of the neighborhood kids.

I also keep putting beer in my ice cream, because John Steinbeck turned me on to the notion of a beer float in Cannery Row. You can’t get a better dessert recommendation than one from John Steinbeck.

Still, I won’t officially be older than dirt – that’s OOTD -- until I turn 901/2 years old like a certain gubernatorial candidate seems to be.

That’s when I’ll be allowed to whack people with my stick if they get in my way while I am out campaigning, or should they stand in front of the TV while I’m in my recliner trying to watch Doctor Who reruns or The Price is Right. Boy, that Drew Carey is something.

Even better, when I get to be 100, I’ll be able to cuss out reporters who ask dumb questions, as most reporters are prone to do.

Well, this one, anyway.

I’ve asked more dumb questions than smart ones, probably. Like the time I asked a guy at a fish hatchery whether or not fish get thirsty. It’s just one of many reasons why I don’t fit in with the community page folks.

Anyway, we used to cover people when they turned 100, so I assume when I’m 100 they’ll maybe resurrect the practice and I can turn the tables on the reporter.

“Who put you up to this, that idiot Jeff Whitten?” I’ll ask. “I sure hope not.”

“But you’re Jeff Whitten,” the reporter will say.

“Am I really?” I’ll say, gleefully. “Hot dog. How about them apples.”

When you’re 100, you can get away with gleefully saying stuff like “hot dog, how about them apples,” and I feel so good at the moment I not only plan on getting to 100, but I might shoot for the world record, whatever it is.

Let’s say it’s 140. That’ll be the new 100 by the time I get to 140, so actually I won’t have the world record then, I’ll have to get to 180 just to be 140.

Shouldn’t be a problem. I take supplements and put beer in my ice cream. I’m fit as a fiddle.

And when I’m the new 140, well, lookout ladies, I might do some extracurricular pinching. Especially if you’re a good-looking young girlie TV reporter who gets close enough for me to pinch, and double especially if my wife’s not around to keep an eye on me because she went to Kroger to get me some Ensure and Depends, because by then I’ll probably need both on a regular basis, at least in part because I put beer on my ice cream and take supplements.

I just hope I don’t end up like that guy in Catch-22 who was in a full-body cast with two tubes – one for stuff going in and the other for stuff going out, and when one of the jars attached to the tube was full and the other was empty they’d just switch the jars around.

Which reminds me of the current midterm elections, actually, if you label one jar Democrat and the other one Republican, and have the requisite tubes and stoppers.

Or maybe not.

But I’m obviously still an important part of this thing we call democracy.

Yesterday I got about a dozen texts from various political folks reminding me there’s an election afoot Tuesday.

That’s on top of the dozen I got the day before, and the day before that and so on and on and on.

And that’s in addition to the dozens of cards, letters, emails and phone calls at all hours – the latter get identified straightaway as spam, so for all I know they could all be some AI-generated-robo-caller trying to sell me a Medicare supplement or a timeshare in Florida, but one call I did answer wanted me to do my sacred duty as an American and vote to keep the Godless commies out of Georgia politics.

In short, they all need my vote. Desperately. And, sadly, they all need my money. About every five minutes someone emails me to ask me to chip in $5 or more to help them stick it up the backside of the side they’re not on.

Republicans need my $5, Democrats need my $5, all God’s children need my $5. That’s a list that includes regular sane conservatives, incoherent MAGA whackjobs, sensible moderates, looneytune progressives, probably even those poor Godless commies.

Some suggest I really help out and give them $5 on a monthly basis. Nope, last time I checked and did some math I found out if I gave $5 a month to every candidate or cause who asked, I’d be shelling out about $75-100 a month.

That’s crazy talk. I am a retired weekly newspaper hack and an nth generation son of the poor working South, not Rockefeller Jr.

And while I’m on the subject, and from here on our it’s going to get a bit preachy, sorry, I’d like to note that though I don’t think I know any real commies, Godless or otherwise, I tend to take the view this is still a free country and they’ve got as much of a Constitutionally- guaranteed right to do their thing as I have to do mine, just so long as we don’t infringe upon anybody else’s right to do their thing while we’re busy doing ours. Or break the law. Or get caught breaking the law, anyhow. Or hurt anyone.

And by “hurt” I don’t mean “offend”. Life tends to be offensive, sometimes. Even when it doesn’t mean to be.

You’ve got to learn to roll with the punches. Or just hush up and let other people get their two cents in. Turn the channel, basically.

Besides, sometimes I think it’s good to remind ourselves other folks have just as much right to their political opinions as we do, and just because someone might have a different take on whoever’s in the White House, for instance, that doesn’t make them bad people or bad Americans.

Someone needs to tell the White House that.

I think what makes people bad Americans is when they think Americans who don’t agree with them or look like them or act like them are bad Americans, or that people who risk everything to be an American are somehow bad if they didn’t follow every law to the letter to get here.

Heck, judging by the number of drivers who go over the speed limit on a daily basis, few of us natural born Americans bother to follow every law to the letter either.

Sure, deport criminals, killers and rapists and those who steal and maim and hurt. But not hardworking people whose only crime is not waiting on a visa or work permit, or having skin the wrong color or not speaking the right language.

And for those who think being an American by birth somehow gives them moral superiority over the rest of the world, sorry to burst that bubble. It doesn’t.

It isn’t where you’re from or what you’re born as. It’s what you do with it. And what you become. And how you treat others.

Finally, one of the worst things happening to us nowadays is we can’t seem to agree to disagree, and I just don’t know how to fix it short of blowing up both political parties and starting over.

I do know I think both sides – and there really are more than two sides, if you stop to think about it might take a step in the right direction if everyone just takes a break from trying to be right all the time and learns to listen instead of continually demanding to be heard.

We need leaders who value consensus, and fairness, and doing the right things as a country the best we can without stomping on people just because they’re different. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the best thing we can do - me included- is just be quiet and thoughtful for a while.

If you’ve read this far, you also probably know the first rule when it comes to politicians and anyone else who wants your attention or thinks they speak for the masses, or, for that matter, beat up old hacks like me: take everything they say with a grain of salt.

Whitten is a former editor of the Bryan County News.