by Roger P. Korth

Something went wrong! I looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t know who was looking back at me. Do you guys look at your cruise books or old photographs of you back in the Navy? Does that look like you?

The hair I had is halfway back on my head, and it’s either grey or white depending on how I feel. What grew up there is now growing out of my eyebrows, ears or nose, and it isn’t pretty.

My svelte body now looks like a bear ready for hibernation. My chest has settled to my belly, and my bicep muscles are hanging. My anchor tattoo looks like a gourd, and mom looks like wow.

The eagle-eyed lookout with hearing like a bat is now blind as a bat and can’t hear farts. Glasses? One pair for distance and another for reading. Tried bifocals but couldn’t adjust. The hearing aids are itchy and expensive and the wife tells me what I need to know.

Found out there are only two kinds of drivers, the old farts creeping in front of me and those bat-out-of-hell kids flying by. Where the hell is a cop when you want one? The wife won’t go in the camper anymore. Said if she wanted to cook on vacation, she can stay home or take a cruise. Besides that, she enjoys the sound of the ice maker in the motel. Sold the boat. Found out there are only two days you enjoy a boat, the day you buy it and the day you sell it.

Now I go to bed when we used to leave the ship for liberty. My get up and go has got up and went. It wasn’t like this when we were aboard. They don’t have Storekeepers anymore; now they’re Logistics something or other. I wonder if I’m too old to reenlist? ♫Anchors aweigh…♫