Dear Editor,
A letter to the friends I went to school with. We are in what some call, “the Golden Age”. Where did that come from?
As the years creep up on you, you become a target for the next calamity. You miss your own teeth, you spend too much time trying to find your glasses, “ put on your damn hearing aids,” I hear my husband say, “I wouldn’t need them if you would speak up and quit mumbling”.
I came across a child’s scribbled “hop scotch” drawing on the sidewalk. I couldn’t resist. I had to hope, well I tried to hope. I finally walked. Hopping seems to hurt my knees.
When I was young and kind of pretty, as we all were, I seemed to get too much attention. I have noticed in the last forty or fifty years, I have become invisible. Kind of takes the pressure off. If my shirts on inside out, or my socks don’t match, nobody notices.
Old friends mean a lot. They always did, but more so now. We laugh at the same stuff, reread old jokes, don’t like “rap” music – some call it music.
My city relatives thought our outhouses, wood piles, pumps and wells were kind of novel. Who of us missed not having a bathtub? Nobody had one.
We had something city folks didn’t have. We knew our neighbours. We helped each other. We trusted each other. We never locked our doors.
That was Barrhead of yesterday. I still have my memories and that’s one of my favorites. Thank you Barrhead.
Mona Baker
Currently in Airdrie, but formerly Barrhead
