Make Me A Sandwich

Never mind your Baby Boomers, your millenials,  and your X'ers, Y's and Z's, let's address the Sandwich Generation.

We don't get much airtime.

In fact, we don't get any.

And no one is out there designing a car, a sneaker or even a smartphone app for us Sandwichers.

If the photo above doesn't sufficiently illustrate the definition of the Sandwich Generation, allow me to elaborate.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Sandwichers have the unappealing responsibility of not only taking care of their children with their insatiable appetite for expensive technology, but also of their elders with their mind bending inability to understand technology.

And so, having spent the entire weekend moving my uncle into an assisted living situation while simultaneously dealing with the finer intricacies of auto insurance brought on by the totaling of my daughter's new car (she's fine), I feel compelled to put in a few words for the long forgotten sandwich people.

My uncle can be, oh how shall I put this, unfiltered and brutally honest. In other words, he's a Siegel.

Nevertheless, despite his orneriness, I love him and insisted he take one of the nicer ($$$) rooms at _______ ______ ____. (I already have a choice list of nicknames for the assisted living home, none of which I will share here.)

And here's why.

In my early years, he would drive up from New York City to take us skiing at all the local places, like Sterling Forest and Mt. Peter. And on the occasional treat, we'd venture further north to Bellayre, with their fancy schmancy chairlifts. Since then I've been a lifelong skier, and despite my girth and barrel chested stance, can cut quite a path on any diamond or double black diamond run. Ok, on some.

In my later years, my uncle taught me something more important -- a tolerance for gay people.

Not that I was very intolerant, but I clearly needed to evolve. I'll bet most bible-thumping, right wingers would find a gay person or two at their Thanksgiving day table if they ever bothered to put the hate on the shelf and shake the family tree.

The evolving is a work in progress.

Because it's also shifted my view on others who have found themselves on the short end of America's caning stick: women, brown people, black people, even fetishists out there who might, in the privacy of their bedroom, do odd things with catcher's masks, dustbusters and peanut butter. All of which is their business, none of which is mine.

I've pent up and reserved all my antipathy for one particular class of people -- contractors.

You see with my uncle now safely ensconced into his new Santa Monica abode, I've got to fix up, renovate, remodel and manage his home in Palm Springs. How hard is it for a painter or a plumber or a carpet installer to make a 10 AM Thursday morning appointment and then show up for a 10 AM Thursday morning appointment? If I did business like these guys did business I'd be an underemployed freelance copywriter....oh wait.

One of these days I will enjoy the rewards of all this.

But right now I've got to run to Best Buy to get my uncle a new mouse to plug into his 2006 Tandy 100MB computer.