BEING OLD CAN BE NEAT

The other day I was having my breakfast, all by myself since the Voice from the Kitchen had already gone to the office for her daily dose of gainful employment.  There is nothing eminently lofty about that, I know.  What is the point of my remark is that while I was doing this, I remember the freedom that I was celebrating fom the screeching directives of MJT, otherwise known as Mama to me, and "Mina" to just about everyone else who knew her.
You see, I was eating a banana.  Yes, a banana for breakfast.  Totally forbidden in the childhood of the five growing children in the 1 Hartford Street home of the Dion household.  Bananas were too "filling."  I have to use that word because it is the closest word that I can use to translate the French word that we would hear if we tried to eat a banana for breakfast.
So since then I have been thinking of the small joys that I get to celebrate now that I am beyond the age of 7.
Besides bananas for breakfast, I get to eat fish raw; I get to eat fish-head soup; I get to eat kimchee (You know, the smelly pickled cabbage Korean stuff); I get to drink coffee just before going to bed for the night; I get to drink my coffee black, too; I get to go outside barefoot in the rain (a rare delight in Southern California); I get to make my bed when I want to; I get to take as many showers as I want, when I want; I get to wear (or not wear) what I want around the house (and even out of the house); I get to eat one meal a day, you know, the one that starts when I get up and stops when I go to bed; I get to talk the language I want around the house (like English, you know); I even get to eat and watch TV at the same time; I get to eat all the ice cream I want (Yes, even in the Winter); ditto for water melon; I get to wash the dishes when I want; I don't have to wear a tie to church; I don't have to run a family taxi service for my aunts on Sundays; and except for not having to turn off the radio in my room at 9:00 PM sharp, I guess that I have run out of joys that I have now that I am old.  Oh,no, I just remembered, I can talk as long as I want on the telephone.  MJT would be happy though, because at my age I have enough of about 2 minutes, so that isn't much of anything to celebrate.
I hope that some of you get the same little things to smile about as you go through life these days. Heck, you have to have something to keep you going, right?