I am now putting olive oil on my pancakes in my coffee sipping it from a wine glass after reading that it is beneficial in holding dementia at bay.

Don't ask me for proof, I believe what I want to believe like most other people my age.

I don't want to spend a couple years babbling in a seniors warehouse.

I intend to do stand-up comedy until I'm 97 and then be shot cleanly by a jealous

husband whose wife told him she wished he were more like me a Republican husband.

These guys know how to shoot straight.

He'll aim his 44 and send me instantly, no pounding on the chest to whatever Paradise God keeps for us

Episcopalians probably a series of barracks where we'll sit around and read the same copy of the

New York Times over and over, and no bliss, just boredom.

Do I sound demented to you, dear a listener, would you tell me if I do?

Meanwhile, I'm alone in this New York apartment.

My sweetie is back in Minnesota, hanging out with artsy people engaged

in witty conversation over glasses of exquisite souvenir blanc discussing the merits of Messien

versus Sassin while her pathetic pal, sits writing nonsense while sipping olive oil. Is this how I imagined my life

would be

distinguished, back when I was your age kiddo? I thought I would grow up and be distinguished, not extinguished.

I got an honorary doctorate long, long ago,

and okay, it wasn't from Yale or Princeton it was from a

little Lutheran school in Minnesota but still I looked good in the gown and the cap and the colorful cape.

A professor with a genuine doctorate read the citation and it made me sound like a combination of John a sock, Will Rogers, and St.

Julia of Corsica, who was sold into slavery but never felt sorry for herself. I never won a literary award, but Stephen Sondheim once walked up to me and told me he enjoyed my limericks. I wish I'd thought to ask someone to take a

picture of him and me together, me looking as modest as I could under the circumstances.

...