Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco studied the diets of 13,000 men and women and discovered that the incidence of gallbladder disease lessened in women with high blood levels of vitamin C and those who took vitamin C supplements. The connection was not found in men. Researchers say that it is beneficial to increase fruit and vegetable intake as a preventive step against gallbladder disease. Apparently, vitamin C aids in the breakdown of cholesterol into bile acids which would otherwise harden into gallstones.

I know a 67-year old retiree, living off an annuity that is going to pay him out until I pass on. That, I believe, is still very far off as far as I’m concerned. Even at my age, I still play basketball. Even though both my teammates and opponents give me a lot of room when I drive to the basket or when I defend them, they still learn a thing or two whenever they come into contact with. I may be a septuagenarian, but they do not dare mess with me unless they want to feel some pain on the court.

I have been playing basketball for more than fifty years, and as far as I’m concerned, the game hasn’t changed much. So the players got bigger and more athletic. Big deal. In basketball, it’s speed and brains that mostly win championships. Size may matter, but not to the point where it is the only thing that does. That is probably why I can still play at a competent level even at my age.

While the current level of basketball play does not faze me one bit, the way offices operate these days actually intimidate me. Office operations today are so far removed from the way offices were run when I was still working. Back then, we relied solely on typewriters to write up our reports. We had but one computer, and only the tech guy was using it. When we made presentations, we had those cellulose acetate sheets projected on overhead projectors. That was pretty high tech back then. If we had to distribute folders of data, we punched up dozens of pages of paper and used standard fasteners when we put them in their respective folder.

How things have changed. My grandson once took me on a tour of his office, and I was pretty amazed by what I saw. On each desk are two or more of those TV screens they call computer monitors. When I asked him what a strange-looking machine, to me at least, was sitting at the corner of one room he showed me, he said it was a spiral binding machine. I only understood one word in that reply, so he showed me one of those folders made by those binding machines. By the end of the day, I was so amazed by everything I saw at my grandson’s office that I jokingly asked him if I could work there. We had a good laugh about it, and drove me home.