Catching Fire

Such an evocative phrase...catching fire. It is unpredictable though. Fire, I mean. Trying to start a fire with wet wood, a closed flue, a faulty draught is hard. My father taught me to light fires when I was eight years old. In those prehistoric days, it was common practice to take paper trash outside to the big stone open pit and burn them. We did the same thing with leaves and dead wood.

Starting a fire like that now would require so many permission slips and county allowances that the paper for one fire would be more than I used to burn each week. I wonder where I was when all these rules were passed to 'protect' me. I certainly wasn't paying attention.

I am a late bloomer. I caught fire late in life with the economic turndown. Just in time to appreciate the irony of being 58 and to young to collect from my IRA without severe penalties.  It just sucks that the administration didn't shift the rules to allow those of us who were let go in stealth 'let's get rid of the employees over 55' attitude that business has taken during this Great Recession.  It really does!

It seems a shame that we cannot get rid of the deadwood in Congress who refuse to realize this fact.