By STAN STAPP

As I grow older (I turned 81 on Jan. 8), I try to adjust to life as graciously as possible, particularly in dealing with not-so-sharp vision and short-term memory. Several examples:

The use of some white plastic tape has helped "sharpen" my vision. I can now tell whether I've locked the main greenhouse door from our bedroom side door (10 feet away) by wrapping a piece of the white tape around the handle. If it is vertical, the door is locked, if horizontal it isn't.

Likewise a white taped arrow stuck on our stereo speaker system volume control knob (with the little red dot) enables me to now tell (from my easy chair) whether it is on LOUD or not. Sometimes in combining both the TV and speaker sound system (turned down the TV and upping the stereo sound) - like when there is stirring music, such as a band playing Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever - it feels like the band is marching through our living room. A day or two later, however, if I turn up the stereo volume again, forgetting it is already up (for I can't make out the little red dot that indicates volume), it BLASTS both my wife Dorothy and our cat Kissi out of their chairs.

Then I have a couple of tricks dealing with memory. When shaving with an electric razor I have a certain routine that, if I don't correctly follow, may result in one side of my face being shaved twice, and the other side not at all. I've solved that by numbering several of my moves: 1 and 2, or A, B, C, D, which I repeat audibly.

Another problem has to do with washing dishes and listening to the TV news at the same time. I'd load the dishwasher, but didn't want to turn it on until the last thing of all (so its noise wouldn't wipe out the TV sound). Then I'd forget to turn it on - and the next day discover DIRTY DISHES! I solved this by NOT returning the Cascade dishwasher soap box under the sink as usual, but instead placing it on top of the counter. Its out-of-place position reminds me to turn on the dishwasher.

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FOR MANY YEARS I've called Mike, my 45-year-old son, "Sonny Boy," and he's called me "Big Daddy" - even though he's the bigger one. Not out in public, please understand, but on the telephone only. Then I read in the P-I that a malfunctioning guy in Bothell had usurped "Big Daddy" for himself and has been using it as his name on the Internet.

Hopefully, not any more, though. For the cops have arrested him for investigation of child molestation, patronizing a juvenile prostitute, child pornography, sexual exploitation of a minor, and other immoralities. Just in case anyone might have overheard me talking to Mike, I'M NOT THAT GUY.

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THREE RECENT TRAGEDIES in the news were more than just items for me:

1. The explosion at the Anacortes oil refinery which killed six men, and mentioned the 19th Hole restaurant, just across the highway, which many workers patronized. During the five years Dorothy and I lived in Anacortes it was one of our favorite restaurants.

2. The drowning of two canoeists just off of Hope Island near LaConner. Our little cabin that we built in the '70s on the Indian reservation was near the island. One day we decided to putt around it in our eight-foot plastic rowboat. It also had a motor, which could propel us about the same speed as rowing, but it didn't need to rest from time to time. We found the water near Hope Island rougher than we had imagined, and the waves much bigger. We were lucky we didn't swamp, and got out of there as fast as we could. Fortunately we were wearing life jackets, for that water was pretty cold, and there were no other boats in the area.

3. The Aurora Bridge bus accident in which a city bus crashed through a guard rail, over the side, landing 40 feet below at North 36th and Aurora. Three people were killed, 32 injured. The scene was two blocks from History House, where I meet every month for board meetings, one block from where I park, and three blocks from where I lived as a baby on Woodland Park Avenue North.

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WHAT A FRIENDLY neighborhood is Wedgwood, where we live. For example, mother Kate and daughters Mollie and Laura invited us to their annual neighborhood holiday party. Mollie took our wraps, and kept track of them. Daughter Laura made our name tags, impressing me, an ex-printer, with her ability to correctly use caps for the first letter, and lower case for the others. And, last September, this family spearheaded a neighborhood potluck block party on Northeast 73rd.

And another family, the Sanders, set a goal to collect 100 cans of food to benefit Northwest Harvest, delivering fliers to homes in our area, and then coming back to collect the cans.

And Lizzie Cady dropped by a jar of homemade blackberry jelly for us.

And Sam Gibson set up his annual Christmas display involving 100 or more Santa Clauses, dolls and other characters, plus colored lights. Sam does the outdoors, his wife, Doris, the windows from indoors. They also do similar displays at Halloween, Valentine's Day, St. Pat's Day, and others.

* * *

DOROTHY'S GOOD DEED the day after Christmas occurred when she spotted a lady with a problem. The lady had dropped her purse in the Matthews grocery parking lot after unloading her grocery cart, and was picking up the small change that had fallen out. Dorothy offered to return the cart to the store, and then the lady, discovering her keys were missing, started looking under her car. In the meantime Dorothy discovered the keys were in the grocery cart, where they had blended in with the grillwork. Thus all ended happily.

* * *

HANK GAY, 71, publisher of the Shelton-Mason County Journal for many years, died of cancer several weeks ago. He was a hero of mine, a master editorialist who often employed satirical humor to make his point. His column also appeared in a dozen weeklies and dailies (including the P-I).

I knew him through our mutual activities in the Washington Newspaper Publisher's Association (WNPA). He served on the Better Newspaper Standards Committee, of which I was chairman; he helped when I displayed 1,920 feet of publicity releases on the lawn of the Yakima Chinook Hotel (where the WNPA was meeting), a three-month collection made at the Outlook (my mother did the collecting) - to demonstrate the waste involved; he and Bob Shaw, WNPA manager, produced a "bogus" newspaper, the Publisher's Accomplice, in which Stan "Bingo" Stapp was a member of the Editorial Slanting Board. Bingo referred to the then current battle I was having with the Post Office which had refused to deliver my paper, the Outlook, by mail because we "were advertising a lottery" - the Wallingford Boys Club bingo game.

When I visited Hank's cluttered office in the '60s, I was so intrigued with the many signs, posters, pictures, stacks of newspapers, magazines, books, posters, and bumper stickers I could hardly wait to get home and do a little disarranging of my own office. Although I could never match his place of work, I still have a few signs, such as, "TRESPASSERS WILL BE VIOLATED," and "BEWARE OF THE BULL," and a campaign poster for Barry Goldwater, "IN YOUR HEART YOU KNOW HE'S RIGHT ABOUT PEACE," and the like.

* * *

DUCT TAPE to the rescue again! This time to anchor a new copyholder beside our new iMac computer - when screws couldn't do the job ...

* * *

KISSI, our cat (who got pretty excited awhile back when a substitute mailman couldn't find our mailbox by the back door, and slipped the mail through her front porch cat door), received a nice Christmas note from Hazel Washburn, former Lincoln High secretary. Kissi was asleep at the time, so I told a white lie - that it HAD been delivered through her door ...

* * *

LIFE in our backyard: two blue jays and two squirrels fighting over some peanuts, and a BIG rat at the thistle feeder ...

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THIS CHRISTMAS Dorothy decorated our Japanese maple in the front yard, draping white lights over the limbs, and (when viewed from our front bedroom window) inadvertantly creating a map of the United States, even including Alaska and the Aleutian Islands - until a wind gust knocked the islands south, to just off the California coast ...

* * *

WE SPENT a quiet New Year's Eve - and still miss hearing Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians playing Auld Lang Syne at midnight as he did so many years ago on both radio and television.

* * *

THE BAD NEWS is that the Carbon River Road on Mount Rainier has washed out again - for the third time in a decade. Park managers and environmentalists are beginning to question whether it should be reopened. I recall, as a kid, with my dad and brother, Art, driving up that road to the Ipsut Creek Campground and hiking the area. The best part was walking up the side of the Carbon River Glacier one evening, a full moon lighting the way, glimpsing huge boulders occasionally breaking loose from the melting end, and thumping their way down the mountainside.

* * *

THE GOOD NEWS, scientists have declared, is that people who eat chocolate live a year longer, and people who fidget don't gain weight. So excuse me while I help myself to another truffle, and do a little fidgeting.

Stan Stapp is the retired publisher of the old Outlook, a family-owned community newspaper that covered North Seattle for several decades until its sale in the mid-'70s. He and his wife Dorothy now reside in the Wedgwood neighborhood.