Poem: October 24, 2019

What Are You Complaining About?

I was once the five-year-old me, and
then the ten-year-old me, and the
sixteen and twenty-one and thirty-
year-old me, and I had to deal with
long-distance charges and rewinding
movies we'd rented. I used a card
catalog and looked up information in
books and edited with correction tape
and watched Scooby-Doo on a twelve
inch black and white TV at precisely
4:00 PM on weekday afternoons, and
had to run to the bathroom during
the commercial breaks. I took photos
with flashcubes and waited a week
to get them back, and I listened to
the Eagles and John Lennon on
8-Tracks. I drove a car that took
leaded gas, and in high school, I had
to take a typing class, and I remember
that my grandfather had shoe horns
and shaving brushes and a leather
punch and coffee cans full of nails.
And he also did the dishes by hand.
And one day, you will be the fifty-
year-old you, and I will be the eighty-
year-old me, and neither of us will
ever perceive the fact of our suffering.