Mel Miskimen

It’s not unnatural for baby boomers to feel like their youth is a thing of the past. Technically these days we range from middle-aged to seniors. The question is, are we at peace with this? Mel Miskimen thought so until she unexpectedly encountered an old flame, and tried to feel the heat.

Oh. My. God.

There he was. At the ward table, getting his ballot. Damn he looked good. It had been 30 years since I had seen him and he had aged well – Harrison Ford-well.

I was a poll worker, registering new voters. It was mid-morning and there were no other electors, except for. . . him. I didn’t even know that he lived in my district! The last I had heard about him was that he had moved to Thailand or was it Taiwan? (somewhere tropical and third-worldy). He was working with a relief-type agency. He made being cause-y so. . . sexy.

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Popularity: 58% [?]

The world has changed since we were kids. And never more so than on the holidays. But as baby boomer comedian Mel Miskimen tells it, that’s not always such a bad thing.

Ah, the Holidays. A time for family, friends, memories.I remember Christmas Eve. We went to my grandma’s house. The first thing that hit me when I walked into her kitchen was that smell — moth balls, stale cigar smoke, a lingering fart or two.

Her decorating scheme? Graceland meets the Vatican. She had a lot of plastic flowers, furniture covers, and many shrines to various saints and causes.
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Popularity: 52% [?]

Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack. Billy Joel only had it in his song. Writer Mel Miskimen just had it in her life. There’s a lesson here … if you live long enough to survive Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack.

Last Friday I was out walking my black Lab, when . . . Ow!

There was that pain again. The one that I had been ignoring for, oh, the past week? It was in my chest. A sort of tightening. I was sure that it was nothing.

But there it was. Again. And nothing really, really hurt.

I called my doctor. I thought that she would tell me to come in, ask the usual questions, then dismiss it and tell me to take a yoga class.

“You need to get to the ER,” she said.

Okay. But, I had to drive myself. Why? Oh, because I didn’t want to get anyone else involved. Over nothing.

There’s something about chest pains that make people act quickly. Labor pains? Not so much. Within twenty minutes, I was transported via wheel chair by an older-than-dirt-man named Sy, to a curtained room with lots of expensive machines, told to take off all my clothing and given a regulation hospital garment that I could not for the life of me figure out how it snapped or where it tied. I had this funny feeling of being filmed for You Tube.

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Popularity: 80% [?]

Mel Miskimen is like most of us boomers, looking forward to the carefree years of childless retirement. But just like most of us boomers, something stood in the way: her parents and how fast they were aging. Maybe the theme of Mel’s candid story is, be prepared.

I was carefree. A recent Empty Nester. I had everything all planned out. Yep. It was going to be the year of Me. And then, I opened my email.

Regarding Mother …

She’s been forgetting things. Asks me the same thing over and over.
This is a problem that may need attention.
Dad.

My father’s 40 plus years as a police officer resulted in his just-the-facts-ma’am writing style.

For him to say anything like this . . . was, well, let me just say, he comes from a family who kept their diseases to themselves until the tumor, dysfunctional gland or whatever it was got to the point of no return – then they went to the hospital. Maybe.

For him to admit that there was a possibility of a problem meant there had to be a problem.

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Popularity: 33% [?]

We like this take by baby boomer Mel Miskimen on what it takes to chase your dream, and to keep running after it, even when no one else seems to share it. She calls it “Midlife at the Improv.”

Stand up comedy has been my dream ever since I saw Totie Fields on the recently deceased Merv Griffin Show, and every once in a while I get the crazy idea that I should chase my dream and do an open mic.

Open mics are in bars or nightclubs. They usually start at 10 p.m. – quite a challenge for me, a 52 year old menopausal woman who is usually asleep on the sofa by 9:05. If you need further proof, I have yet to make it through an entire episode of any of the CSIs. On the day of the night, I ingested enough caffeine (coffee, tea, Extra Strength Excedrine) to simulate a cardiac episode.

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Popularity: 30% [?]