Ben Beagle

The aging, semi-hysterical retired reporter rides shotgun with the greatest station wagon driver of them all down the rocky road of life. Mondays and Wednesdays, steady as she goes.

Recent columns

• Bennie's sending holiday regrets to dear old Aunt Z
• I'll find something else to do during Palin's talk
• He's sick of trying to keep up with national health debate
• Change can have its challenges

I know a lot of you are just worried sick -- as your Aunt Zelda used to say -- about the economy.

We have seen that even President Bush finally started worrying about it and had this news conference that might have set us all into a run on the banks -- and made you wonder about putting all your money under the twin mattress.

And then Congress came up with this $700 billion bill to fix things. Stay calm. Don't use your mattress the way your Aunt Persephone did during the Great Depression, although Uncle Ajax couldn't sleep for worrying about sleeping on his money.

I'd forget about getting all of your money out of the bank and putting it under your mattress -- which would mean you wouldn't get a decent night's sleep.

Get a lockbox

And, at your age, you're probably too weak to lift your mattress to get the money out to fill up your car with gasoline.

Even if you could get to the money, you wouldn't have a whole lot left after you filled up.

I'd suggest that you put all your money -- after you fill up at the convenience store -- into a flameproof lockbox and bury it under the azaleas -- just like your great grandmother did with the silver when the Yankees were coming.

My great grandmother didn't have any silver, but I'm sure you catch my meaning here.

I also sense that some of you are looking for windows to jump out of in case you need them.

I advise you to stop looking around for windows to jump out of.

Choose your window

The fact of the matter is that you don't have any really good windows to jump out of unless you are a captain of industry and have really big windows with a view of the East River. Your big upper windows on the front of your two-story house aren't very far off the ground. Jump out of one of them and a lot of expensive foundation plantings will break your fall. Try to squeeze through one of the little ones on the back, and you'll be trapped and somebody will have to call 911.

If you live in a one-story ranch, your window-jumping opportunities are somewhat limited -- aside from the roof.

It's debatable

Besides window-jumping advice, I should also warn you against watching any of the presidential debates. They can debate until shortly after Halloween and you're not going to notice it at the gas pump.

The last presidential debate I watched was the one in which Richard Milhous Nixon got all of this sweat on his upper lip. And I went to sleep shortly after that -- being unable to find a window to jump out of.

Ben Beagle's column runs weekly in Monday Extra.