Have you thought about ancient Rome today? That is an odd question, related to one of the oddest trend stories I’ve encountered on the internet.

An online social influencer recently urged followers to ask the men in their life how often they think about the Roman empire, you know, the good old days of gladiators, centurions, land and sea battles and philosopher-emperors like Marcus Aurelius.

Rome conquered much of the world — but not America, textbooks in Florida and Texas might point out. And they invented an entire language, Latin.

Women reportedly were shocked that the men they checked with think about the empire quite a bit, even daily. Their posts went viral, and august publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post took notice and wrote stories about it. Carpe diem and all that.

As for me, I mostly let sleeping empires lie. Et tu, reader? If there’s no football game on, maybe Rome is where it’s at.

Actually, I have thought about Roman engineers a little during this jackhammer summer, when Lebanon’s Miracle Mile repeatedly shook my innards. The Romans built roads that lasted for centuries, not until the next round of federal highway grants, and for that I salute them. Hail Caesar, et al.

Thinking about how I don’t think about ancient Rome made me consider what I do think about.

I probably do too much political fretting. “O tempora, o mores!” Cicero reportedly said, before cable news and social media: “Oh, the times, Oh, the customs!” I’ll say this of the Roman statesman, writer, philosopher, lawyer and overall smart guy — he got that right.

Instead of the issues of our time, or Rome, I sometimes turn to simpler things for comfort mulling. I remember our three family dogs who covered the full spectrum. Sebastian, the German shepherd, loved us but hated all dogs and most humans. Jessie, the Irish setter, was a lunatic. Muffin, a stray mutt, was a placid creature, no trouble at all. I think of her sitting at full attention next to our daughter in her highchair as she ate SpaghettiOs with her hands. Muffin saw the possibilities and watched with a rapture I’d associate only with paintings of the saints.

I sometimes think of cars we owned. Through the years we have usually had one nice vehicle — suitable for long trips to visit family elsewhere in New England — and a second car from the Things Fall Apart Garage. I stayed fairly close to home until a head gasket failed or the cost of routine repairs exceeded the value of the car. I still think about my VW bug, which barely had any heat back in the cold winters before global warming. I start to think I wish I still had it, and then I think of rust, and the passing of time, and how I had to clear the windshield inside with a scraper as I drove.

No thanks.

For some reason I think sometimes of the “Leave It to Beaver” TV show, which my younger brother and I watched in reruns. Beaver said “kinda” a lot. The show was kinda funny, kinda nice, kinda sweet. I also liked that he had friends with nicknames like Whitey and Lumpy. It was a happy dream in black and white. 

But that reverie is nothing compared with the tidal wave of memories that flow when I come upon photos of our children as they grew up or the books they created at Mount Lebanon School. They and their friends were a traveling troupe of entertainers. My heart melts to think of it.

Rarely, I ask myself what-if questions. What would the Upper Valley be if the interstates hadn’t been built? And what would the Upper Valley be without the twin colossi, Dartmouth College and DHMC? My house in West Lebanon would be worth a lot less, and someone else would likely own it, because I probably wouldn’t be here. 

When I hear that the chain pharmacies are struggling to keep regular hours, I sometimes think of the Red Cross Pharmacy, which was still open on Main Street when we showed up in the early 1980s. What did we gain and what did we lose when the chains swallowed up all the local competition?

But what I should have been thinking about when I wrote my last column is the political biography of John Kasich, who I said had been governor of Pennsylvania. Actually, he’s a former governor of Ohio, which is another state altogether.

Several readers let me know of my folly. If Google translate is correct, then ego paenitet erroris, I regret the error. Good old Latin, still relevant after all these years.

Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.