Getting Up
There
In
a departure from my usual practice, this column
contains adult material. As a rule, that expression means stuff chiefly of
interest to adolescent males. In this case, it really refers to
adults. It
may not be suitable for readers under the age of 50.
The late Meg
Greenfield of the Washington Post once wrote a hilarious
essay on aging. She noted that when she turned 50, younger people would try
to console her by saying, Oh, thats not old! Her
comment: It is death to hear.
Amen. Having
turned 60 this year, I get the same consolation all the time. I
know what Meg meant. The harder people try to deny that youre old,
the older you feel. Its about as reassuring as someone volunteering,
I hardly noticed your goiter!
In his charming
autobiography, Bob Dylan comments that he never really understood the
generation he was supposed to be the voice of. I never understood it either,
and Im glad to know he felt the same way. But now that we Baby
Boomers are getting up there, we need spokesmen less modest than Bob,
who is still singing love songs. We need grouchy old guys such as myself.
Getting old is
like adolescence in reverse. Your body keeps giving you surprises again, but
theyre not as much fun this time. Organs you used to take for
granted cease to function quite as well, causing you inconvenience,
discomfort, and embarrassment. Nobody has ever prepared you for all the
things aging entails.
You find
yourself preoccupied with things you didnt have to think about when
you were young, such as health and, oh, burial plots. You go to the doctor a
lot. You catch yourself boring people with your infirmities and operations
the same way your old aunts used to do, causing you to try to
suppress yawns and tactfully change the subject. (Thats very
sad, Aunt Louise. Say, did you watch the Tigers game last
night?)
The most
shocking thing about getting old is that its happening to, of all people,
you. Youve always known that old people forget things and repeat
themselves a lot but you? Now your kids keep telling
you, in a tone somewhere between pity and impatience, You already
said that, Dad.
![[Breaker quote for Getting Up There: Warning: adult material]](2006breakers/061019.gif) Although,
when you imagined yourself getting
old, you knew your body might fail, you assumed that your mind would still
continue to be the same lucid instrument it always was. Your personality
wouldnt change. How could it? Except in a few superficial details, you
would still be you. The idea of
you-with-a-different-mind, if it had ever occurred to you, would have seemed
a contradiction in terms. Sort of like a personality transplant.
Not that there
arent some advantages to aging. After my ankle surgery last year, I
discovered that using a cane caused young people to treat me with courtesy
and veneration. They called me sir and held doors open for
me. So Ive kept using the cane even though the foot has healed.
Its a nice prop. It doesnt attract young women, but it drives
the more mature chicks wild. I cant wait to get my walker; Ill
have to beat them off with my cane.
Of course as
you age one of the biggest changes in your life is that, every day, you have
to eat your weight in pills. Doctors orders. Keeping track of them all
is hard enough; but they also come with warnings like this: Side
effects may include loss of appetite, dizziness, diarrhea, erectile
dysfunction, cancer of the esophagus, and Lou Gehrigs
disease. What, no Alzheimers?
After reading
all these cautions, you may wonder if just jumping off your roof might have
fewer adverse consequences. Unless you want to take even more pills to deal
with the side effects, you may finally just decide to take some Alka-Seltzer
and hope for the best.
At least
youre not alone. Old friends, whom youve known from your
youth, are going through the same thing. You make rueful jokes about it
(The wee hours have become the wee-wee hours) and
compare notes on products, mostly from the drug store, you never thought
youd need.
Getting old is
like adolescence In reverse. Your body keeps wait! I already said that,
didnt I?
Joseph Sobran
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