Wednesday -- March -- already!

How time flies when -- well, so much for cliches. My kids seem to think I use them too much anyway. But what's fascinating - well, not fascinating but maybe troubling - is how fast time does go by the older you get. My dear Daddy - God rest him, used to tell me that if I thought time was going by fast then, it would be nothing compared to how it will seem when I get older. How true, how true! You wake up and find a year or two has gone by. It's just plain scary.

Last night, very late, on C-Span (insomnia again) Bill Clinton was addressing the governors and he's starting some kind of national program to try to get kids to eating more healthy diets and getting more exercise. Apparently the fast-food places - -he specifically said McDonald's, is trying to figure out a way to frie the french fries without the trans fats. Scientists are beginning to study the composition of our foods and the effects on our bodies.

Now, in my opinion, that's the ticket right there! I firmly believe the biggest problem (no pun intended) is the composition of our food. I mean, think about what chemicals they use now and all the steroids they feed the animals and we're even eating cloned animals! God only knows what we're eating. And that's not counting the pollution that is in our ground waters that our plants feed on and all the pollution in our oceans to poison the fish we eat and all. This is a world problem - not only a U.S. problem!

Exercise is nice and it's good to make you feel better and all that (I don't get enough - at all!!! understatement), but that's not the real problem with the whole world having this humongous weight gain. I mean, look at some police officers and nurses and ambulance drivers -- I've seen some really hefty ones! Those people definitely get exercise. I hope I'm still alive when they figure this all out and "invent" the cure. The problem hasn't escaped me, for sure. Granted, I could do some things to improve matters, but I know from my own past experiences with this that it's more to it than just calories and exercise that's outside of a person's control.

Anyway, he was talking about trying to make schools get healthier foods in the cafeterias, available to the kids, and get physical education back in school. Now, I remember when I graduated in 1965 we had healthy menus in our cafeterias, milk or orange juice to drink. To have candy machines or Coke machines at school -- we would have thought we died and were in heaven. Totally not allowed. And I remember when they decided to allow these things in the schools thinking that it was soooo wrong to make all the junk food so readily available to our youth. The village does -- should --raise the child. President Kennedy had started a physical fitness program that continued for a few years that you HAD to take P.E. You HAD to do so many setups and run around the football field at least twice to pass the grade -- not just the P.E. class. It was mandatory!

Now, I could come up with excuses along with the best of them to get excuses to not take part in P.E. I could handle the sit-ups just fine -- could do those all day long, but running was never my thing. So, that requirement almost did me in. I remember Ms. Davis, "Come on, now, come on, keep going, you can do it! Not much further." And there was my friend Kay sprinting around the field about four times waiting on me! Shoot, even then my legs didn't do what was asked of them. Speaking of Ms. Davis, she wasn't no trim and slim lady and she was a PE coach. But she was great! Now, all that was 42 years ago when I was a junior (I took Distributive Education when I was a senior. So, that got me out of PE) -- but I can remember it like yesterday. To say "42 years ago" sounds unbelievable. But to remember to turn the lights off in my car, to remember to take the keys out of the front door, to remember to get my glasses before I leave the house -- well, that's another story. About the only good thing about approaching senior status is you begin to remember things from years ago that you had long ago forgotten. I've been asked about something that happened that I don't remember, and say, "Give me another year or two, and I'll remember every detail like it was yesterday."