I just have one message for our new King Charles III. I hope you’re not superstitious.

Peter was a teacher, a quiet fellow, on the same staff as I many years ago. In conversation one day the name of a troublesome student came up. “That kid’s a pain in the neck,” I remarked. “Well, Terry,” said Peter, with a slow smile, “I have an even lower opinion of him.”

Dagwood Bumstead is 92 years old. Mind you, he was already a young man when he was born, as a character in a newspaper comic strip. Which would make him over 100 if you count the youth he never had. Well, I was born in the 1930s also, though near the end of it. He of course looks much younger than I. His wife Blondie is also a century old but still looks like the cute gal she was in 1930. So you’d think they have a pretty good life. But they have one terrible burden: two 75- year-old kids who look like teenagers and refuse to leave home. And Dagwood for some reason can’t retire . He’s still working at an office for a cruel old boss who must be close to 200. Poor man.

If you’re not nearly as rich or famous as you’d like to be, why not? Didn’t you work hard enough? Weren’t persistent? Didn’t know the right people?  No, no, don’t blame yourself, it’s not your fault.

Maybe money isn’t the root of all evil. Maybe gasoline is, when it comes to thievery. From a CBS report: “The owner of a gas station in Houston, Texas, believes he was targeted by someone in a minivan with a trap door who parked the vehicle over underground storage tanks and sucked up $5000 worth of stolen gas.”