To be continued (TBC) is a phrase your scribe uses to conclude a daily piece when he has a multi part set of loosely connected things he wants to say. Given his advancing years, it’s a bit presumptuous. These TBC pieces should probably conclude with “The End?” given his advanced years.
At his age, he is not sure why he continues employing this cliffhanger plot device phrase in his dailies. He has no characters who are in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode. Cliffhangers normally attempt to ensure the audience will return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma. In his instance, your scribe should use the phrase only as self-encouraging exclamation to awaken the next day and finish off what he left hanging.
For sure, despite life expectancy tables, TBC is an undue assumption after ones turns 60. All oldsters should know better after so many life experiences have instructed them otherwise.
Nothing is written nor guaranteed for seniors, but they act as if the phrase “to be continued” is their birth right. You would think that they would have already learned these lessons.
Forgive your scribe this short digression’s observations:
Life during old age is a gift. So many don’t make it this far. Small things matter more. Even a successful daily constitutional can be better than world peace at this stage.
Many think that time “passes” or flows past us. But it is people who move forward, from past to future, always discovering and creating the new. Time is the ocean on which we mariners sail. Sailors’ voyages go faster the emptier the ocean is. Lives with no meaning speeds straight past its voyagers, like ghost ships traveling at flank speed with no destination.
Lastly, life is like reading a book. The book is all there between its covers. If one wants to understand, let alone enjoy, the book, begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. Skipping ahead or putting the book aside often leads to missing the good parts.
For reasons unknown, oldsters seemingly aren’t expected at this stage to grow and learn more and more as they age. It wasn’t that way, when they were young. No one calls out seniors on their default use of TBC. Why not? More importantly, why do they still deploy these favorable assumptions about daily life?
In any event, perhaps your scribe’s TBCs are another way of defiantly shouting Bugs Bunny’s graffiti’d change to Porky Pigs closing stuttered slogan “That’s not quite all Folks!” or the 1-800-call-now ads’ “But wait! There’s more!” or simply “But wait . . . there’s more, right?”
Despite his lifelong addiction to all things Bug Bunny, your scribe’s take on TBC leans towards the chorus of the old Temptation’s love song of the same name:
Cause you and I, we really must be in love
There’s no denying girl it’s real
To be continued, another day
Set the stage for another play
To be continued, OH OH just turn the page oh oh owwwww
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