Sometimes I sit around and brood. To scream or not to scream?
No, not like that. That shit’s stupid. Wondering to myself – in my head wondering, you know, inaudibly to myself. ‘Cause if you said it aloud, people might mistake you, think you were a little old and losing it and, you know, like demented – if I’m old. There – I said it. Old. Oh-El-Dee. Old. As in… used up, past his prime, wrinkly, slow, maybe a scootch forgetful. And my wife claims, alleges really, I don’t hear so good. That kind of old.
My now dead Mother once told me way back when, when even then I was no longer a young man:
“Son, there are some days, if you didn’t look in a mirror, you’d have no idea how old you are.”
I look forward to those days. Which explains an absence of mirrors.
But I joke. Mirrors everywhere. Like the way I look. Probably be older the next time.
Problem is when you start comparing yourself to Olympic athletes or swimsuit models or MMA stars. Just kill me now.
Worst is when you look at your own skin in a bright light with your reading glasses. Like a Roger Corman movie.
Joke about drawing a pencil line atop my forehead. So, in the morning I can see how much my hairline has receded while I slept. My Dad used to draw pencil lines on his bottles of booze, but that’s another story.
If I am not old, does that make me elderly. Or a senior? Perhaps something more benign. Like when squid sales took off after they changed the name to calamari. Oh, him, oh, he’s chronologically challenged.
Be honest. Appreciate getting discounts at department stores on Tuesdays. Cheaper movie tickets, too.
Which I never understood until I got too old to drive in the dark and would rather sit in my vibrating power leather recliner and read a crazy right-wing paper about how screwed up this world has become.
I remember being a little kid and listening to my grandpa who was younger than I am now and he’d complain about how things were and how great they used to be and I’d think I’m never gonna be old and grouchy and complain about how good the old days were.
I’m gonna adapt and evolve and embrace the new today which is here now and I am stuck in, regardless of the years past.
But there is still the sixty-inch high-def television, there’s still that. And the hot tub. And the triple-black hot rod with the black twenties and tinted windows so dark.
Awesome wife, super dog.
And that third place medal in my age-group at a 5K last weekend.
Jumping up and down on the podium, shouting, “We’re not dead, we’re not dead, we’re not dead!!!”
Can’t quite figure out if I am half as fast or twice as slow….
Gonna completely fill my Depends about the time some young hottie offers to help me across the street.