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By Jane Bokun

I’m one of those older folks who says to myself, I’m not going to let this old age thing beat me.

I’m still going to dye my hair because this new “let your hair go gray thing” is beyond my comprehension. My mother gave us her exact hair dye color for her coffin.

Gray hair screams I’m quitting this rat race. It’s like women who wear the same black polyester pants with a printed polyester shirt every day. What else could you say but, “she quit.”

To keep up with my youthful aspirations, I have not gone gray and I decided to treat my older self and sign up for an invigorating class called Chat GPT Prompts. Even though I earned a journalism degree, I was not a great lover of learning in the ‘80s. I’m also harboring a sneaking suspicion that I have Alzheimer’s Disease because of the ads that are constantly running on television for people in my age group.

I had hope that maybe being old had made me a lover of data and studying, instead of my younger years of skipping class and getting high. Maybe because I’m old, I’m a whole, new person.

That isn’t what happened. The class showed up on Facebook, which seems to really be my crowd, and it was somehow sponsored by Purdue University. My chemical engineer husband went to Purdue and I wanted to let him know how easy it was to attend that university. It was about $1,000 for the class and was worth it to rub my Chat GPT knowledge in my husband’s face. Truthfully, I was rubbing It in everyone’s face just to seem relevant.

I would drop, “I’m taking a Chat GPT class” into any conversation like an attention hungry stepchild. It worked. People were looking at me with respect as if I had said, “So, I just won a Pulitzer.”

Once in the class, which was online (ugh), I felt a sense of invigoration. I can learn new things, I thought.  What I didn’t count on was making slides, google slides to be exact. In my whole working life, I’ve never had to make a slide. I never even had to do a PowerPoint. They didn’t even have the Internet when I first started school and only a crude one at work. Slides are a whole new level of hell for me.

There was also a another slide problem for me. I really didn’t want anyone in the class of engineers, computer analysts and scrum masters to know that I didn’t know.

I’ve done all the homework, but I don’t think this class is for me,” said another elderly woman.“

“True dat,” I thought to myself.

I became behinder and behinder in the class and started to worry. Would I actually have to tell the teacher I couldn’t make a slide, but I was getting hundreds in the weekly tests? The class was only five weeks long and was packed with assignments and tests.

“Is this class the Harvard of slide making?” I thought.

Finally, I and the teacher did the slides together. It was still hard for me, but eventually I figured it out.

In the end, it’s not the certificate that matters. It’s not the end of the road, it’s the journey. I landed up learning Chat GPT and it is a help. I get a lot of answers when I Chat GPT Alzheimer’s.

By Jane Bokun

I recently went to a hockey game with my family that went something like this:

“We’re going to a hockey game in Chapel Hill. Do you wanna go?”

My anxiety riddled mind sent back this firm idea: no!

My mouth is many times in contention with my mind and I heard it saying, yes! Those two parts of my anatomy never get along and sentenced me to another football, baseball, hockey or man game I had to attend to spend a few hours with the family.

“How can I make this a palatable experience for all of us?” I thought.

The answer was obvious. Bring a book.

The book I brought was “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus. It’s a big, hardbound book about women who were left out of the working world in the 1950s. I put it under my arm and took off for another game I never really understood.

Something strange was happening as I was carrying my book about two miles up a road flanked by hundreds of people to get to the box office of a man sport. Women were stopping me and asking me about the book.

“Is that Lessons in Chemistry?” one women asked. “I should have brought my copy.”

That was followed by about 10 other women marveling over my brilliant idea to bring a book. Some even did a thumbs up when they saw my book.

“What is happening here?” my curious sociological mind asked. “Why would women rather read a book then watch male dominated sports?

It could be the sexism. For myself, I think it’s just boring. Why? Probably because girls were never allowed on baseball teams when I was growing up. There was that team ? but that didn’t last. Plus, it’s boring. Baseball is too long by two innings I always say.

An article in the New York Times agrees with me. It is the sexism.

The New York Times article said, “What’s happened in baseball most recently is just a wake-up call,” said Renée Tirado, who joined M.L.B. in 2016 as its chief diversity and inclusion officer before leaving in 2019. “And it was inevitable. We’re in an age of social media. We’re in a different type of age that demands a different type of accountability.”

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By Jane Bokun

It’s 3 a.m and I am anxiously looking at my newish phone every hour on the hour. Sleep is eluding me, but I’m in here in my 60s giving it the old college try. The old joke is how to sleep when you’re old? Sit in a chair. 

Yesterday, I got a call from a good friend asking if I wanted to cover the recent Donald J. Trump talk with Bloomberg News for her beautiful magazine called “Felix.” The show’s at the Fairmont Hotel, just around the corner from a hotel I booked for the night called the Chicago Millenium. After I looked at the comments on the hotel’s website, I noticed someone said there was blood on the sheets, nice, and it took me back. 

I’m here because I said yes to the dress, yes to covering Trump. Yes, to everything. I felt like a young cub reporter, and I realized how much I missed that feeling, all problems, and nerves and then no problems booze wouldn’t cure. 

Press had to meet at the hotel at 5:30 a.m. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten up that early. I trained my newborn to get up at 9 a.m. This might be a problem. 

“You’re always late,” my sister and nephew said. “Get there early.” 

I split the difference and arrived at 4 a.m. where I expected heavy Secret Service pat downs. But nothing.  I sat there until 5:30 a.m. and then meandered to a ballroom where they Secret Service) told me to put my camera down and leave it until 9:30 a.m. I then went back to my questionably sheeted hotel and went back to sleep. After that, it was time to see Trump and Bloomberg Editor-in-chief John Micklethwait. 

The reason we all convened was because Trump was addressing the Economic Club of Chicago ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The former president, and current GOP nominee, was interviewed by Micklethwait, whose name appears to be a mouthful. 

The press section, about 100 reporters, were seated behind members of the Economic Club who had drinks and breakfast. The press had coffee and seemed to be thoroughly pissed off. Maybe if we had croissants? Trump also was late, hours late. 

“Is this normal?” I asked a fellow old man reporter.” He doesn’t care,” the man said. 

Once he was on the podium, it was hard to stay mad at him. In my view, he was genuinely funny and I’m a sucker for laughter since I’ve had so few giggles since age 60. He started by talking tariffs and said he loves them for China. 

Micklethwaite in a heavy British accent (love that for United States elections) countered Trump on every idea. 

“You’ve been wrong your whole life,” Trump said to Micklethwait. Kinda made me think Trump has zero fucks left to give.