Many of you have already seen “Oppenheimer” and wonder why we haven’t. After all, the subject matter is more than interesting, and the film has been so well reviewed, and it’s playing at our neighborhood theater. Here is why we haven’t seen it.

In order to see “Oppenheimer”, you need to decide to see it, decide when you want to see it, find a time when both of you want to see it, make sure there is nothing else on your calendar, get tickets in advance either in person or on line, decide where you want to sit in the theater and make sure those seats are available, put it on your calendar, keep your eye on the clock so that you will leave your house on time, make sure you have your shoes on, leave the house, lock the door behind you, walk to the car, unlock the car (both doors), get in the car, put on your seat belts, start the car, back out of the driveway and onto the street, drive to the theater, find a parking space, park in the parking space, walk from the parking space to the theater, pick up your tickets or show your tickets to the usher, find your seats, sit in your seats, and turn off your phone. After the film is over, you must reverse course and do many (or most) of these things until you find yourselves at home and can remove your shoes.

If, on the other hand, you do not see “Oppenheimer”, you do not have to do any of those things.

Now you know why we haven’t seen “Oppenheimer” yet.

This gets me to a point for those of you who have reached the age of 80. Do you find that, although most things that you do are no more difficult than they were when you were 30 and take no more time, the prospect of doing any of these things makes you hesitate because it all seems so complicated, even though it isn’t?

Take purchasing an extra ticket for a baseball game. We have tickets, as part of our mini-series, for the Nats-Phillies game on Saturday. A 4 p.m. game. But we asked 8 year old granddaughter Joan if she wanted to come with us and, of course, the answer was “yes”. My task was to buy one more ticket (which meant possibly changing our seats for others, as well). Now all this is done on-line and the entire process took me about 2 minutes. But the thought of doing it made me put it off for days and days. After all, you have to go the Ballpark app, and then you have to get into your account which may mean that you need to use your password that you would have to find on your list of passwords (which is not about the size of War and Peace), and then you’d have to find out how to buy a ticket and then how to choose a seat (or possibly three seats, figuring out how to switch seats, something I have never done for the same game), and then you have to pay for it and make sure that they actually sent you a ticket to the seat that you bought. None of this, in fact, is difficult – the Ballpark App works very well, and it was very quick and easy. But the thought of doing it…..

Right now, I have about an hour and a half (actually a little less than that) before I have to leave to meet a friend for lunch. I have a list of 7 things I want to accomplish. I need to contact our pest control service and give them my new credit card so that they can come out and attack the ants that have decided to attack the kitchen. I have to send some Jewish Funeral Practices Committee data to our new Treasurer, so that she can send out some payments. I have to register for Rabbi Ellenson’s program at the Haberman Institute. I have to make a hotel reservation for Labor Day night as we head up to Saratoga Springs NY to meet with my high school friends. I have to compose and send out a couple of emails to various people to encourage them to come to the Ellenson program. I have to send out a couple of thank you notes to recent Haberman contributors. I have to get in touch with out financial advisors and request some charitable distributions from my IRA.

I made up this list last night. Things to accomplish between 10 a.m. today (when I was leaving a Zoom session) and 11:30, when I left the house for lunch. Composing the list was easy enough. Each of these activities is about as simple as possible. But the prospect of doing any of them is overwhelming. Hey…..I haven’t read the newspapers yet. Hey….I should make myself another cup of coffee. Hey….I wonder what CNN is reporting now.

I don’t think this was my attitude when I was, say, 79. But at 80……boy, isn’t it the bees knees to procrastinate. (I did read something about the benefits of procrastination: first, you don’t have to do anything today. Second, you won’t be bored tomorrow – you will for sure have something to do.)

By the way, as an aside: food. We had supper last night with two friends at Sababa, a (theoretically) Israeli restaurant in Cleveland Park. I had only eaten there once before, and I had decided the food was, if not ordinary, not spectacular. But last night, when we ordered vegetarian only dishes to share, the food was spectacular. We had sweet corn falafel, fried cauliflower, roasted halumi, charred eggplant, turmeric tahini, muhammara, garlic labneh, sweet and sour carrots, and baba ganoush with brussel sprouts. I think that’s it. If you get a chance, stop in there for supper. I know, going out to supper involves a lot of steps, but I have simplified some of them for you by already giving you your menu selections.

OK, gotta go. Stuff to do.

First…..that second cup.