It costs extra for the holes

Folks! If we can hang on one more year, we'll have survived the first decade of the 21st Century. And what a decade it's turning out to be. It seems like we've been on a "magical mystery tour." 2010 is at hand. And I finally discovered the secret to staying young: lie about your age.

The bright side of being 76 years old is that there's only a few things left to learn the hard way. Age enables folks like me to recognize mistakes I make now as the same ones I made when I was younger. The only difference is now they cost 10 times more and there's no way for me to replace the money I blew. The economy has changed and since the invention of the credit card and now the debit card, actual money is an abstraction. There's some of us that can hardly remember what a 20-dollar bill looks like. A lot of us have forgot that credit and debt are one and the same.

When I retired from my own business 17 years ago, my bride and I believed if we weren't extravagant, we'd have enough money to make it to the graveyard. We hadn't bought a brand new car in more than 20 years and never got a sub-prime loan on any piece of property we bought. All the while we were in business we had no health insurance and paid state and federal taxes while living the American dream. Now we've been around long enough to see Ronald Reagan's trickle-down prosperity turn into George Bush's creeping-up poverty.

I know everybody needs to feel good about themselves. But it appears that for way too long, we've been piling up a lot of debt on image polishing instead of looking for value. How else can you explain buying a Mercedes or BMW instead of a Chevy or Ford? How else can you explain that little alligator or polo player on the front of shirts, or the symmetrical patterned LV's on purses and luggage? If not for image's sake, how else can you explain Martha Stewart? In our rush to bolster our self-esteem we've made millionaires out of folks with low skills and little to no talent at all. Paris Hilton and Britney Spears designer perfumes are available at fancy department stores and Big Lots. Cindy Crawford's name and picture is plastered all over JC Penney's. I'm glad to see Cindy's still making a living but what the heck does she have to do with anything at JC Penney's? How does doing Pepsi commercials in Daisy Duke shorts, making two movie bombs and a few dates with Richard Gere elevate Cindy to guru status? I know! I know! She's a supermodel but it still reminds me of the line, "That ain't working" in the Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" song. It appears our search for self-esteem has prompted a lot of us to overpay for things simply because it has somebody's name on it. We've let our children, who have no money of their own, drape themselves in ridiculous outfits to the point where they all look identical.

Remember when you were a kid and your parents bought you clothes in sizes larger than you were so that you could wear them longer? And then pass them down to your younger brothers, sisters or cousins. Value-conscious parents bought their kids "Tuff Skin" jeans with double-denim knees.

But somewhere along the line it looks like a lot of parents lost control of themselves, their wallets and their children. Most kids today wouldn't be caught dead in "Tuff Skins." They want "designer" jeans. They want those jeans that are prewashed, stonewashed with factory-installed bleach spots. Some designer jeans even come with holes already in them. And parents are paying extra for the holes. Go figure.

But the times they are a-changing. Sub-prime housing bubbles, TARP, bailouts, stimulus and taxpayers becoming part-owners of General Motors has tripled the national debt. Captain Ahab Obama harpooned the economy and now we're floating in a sea of debris we can't pay for. Once-proud Californians are now the reverse "Okies" of 2009 and they're coming to Texas looking for work. Down-and-out soccer moms, hoping they won't run into someone they know, are driving their pre-owned Mercedes to thrift stores on the other side of town to buy their designer fashions.

With the rising cost of living, the problem for my bride and me appears to be that we're gonna out live our money. While we were waiting for the bankers to come to our aid and President Obama to create or save a job for us, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid gave us a Christmas present. Yep, it's a health care donut with a bigger hole. And just like those designer jeans, we're gonna have to pay extra for the bigger hole. In an effort to cover the higher costs, we've cut back on self-indulgence. My bride calls different beauty parlors around town searching for the lowest estimate on hairdos and we shop for our bakery goods at Mrs. Baird's pre-owned bread store in Plano.

The bankers haven't shown up yet for our rescue and we still don't have a job. So we're thinking about "re-gifting" our Christmas present back to Pelosi and Reid.

Ken Byler is a Star columnist, author and artist. E-mail him at kbyler@tx.rr.com.

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