You Know You're Old When:

YOU KNOW YOU’RE OLD WHEN:

              You and your spouse are considering purchasing matching walkers, only he gets red and you get blue. And just to show that you are not dinosaurs, you are also getting the attachable cell phone holders.

Soup is not the course between the appetizer and the entrée, it IS the entrée, mostly because it is easy to slurp, chew and swallow. I now look at left-overs with an eye to “I wonder if soup from that that would be good”. And pudding seems so much tastier. Sometimes I can’t even wait for it to cool and have been known to eat it right out of the pan. Oh, you, too?

The trivia game you’re playing asks “What noise did Froggie the Gremlin make?” and everyone around the table starts to sing “Cream of Wheat is so good to eat and we eat it every day” lalala! And I say “Boinggggg”, in answer to the Froggie question. Immediately, it’s Saturday morning, again and we’re listening to “Let’s Pretend” on the radio, sponsored by Buster Brown Shoes.

Speaking of shoes, remember when you were a little kid and you went to the shoe store and how exciting it was to put your feet into that weird seat the salesman had, so you could see your very own actual foot bones? It was the high point of every shoe-shopping excursion. Good grief! It’s amazing our footbones have not dis-integrated with all that radiation. Or, maybe that’s still coming. I am assuming I am not yet as old as I’m going to be. Who knows what joyous health issues are just around the corner?

I live on a street that has a steep incline. People walk their dogs up and down, every day and others run themselves up and down, every day. They probably don’t notice me watching them as they glide along, with their long, young strides moving them up the hill. I’m the one over there, green with envy, wishing I could move like that. They don’t wobble, they don’t tilt to one side or hang onto trees on the way up and they don’t fall down. It’s the most marvelous thing. I think I used to be able to do that. But the ones that really get me in a twist are the little kids with their electric scooters and their self-balancing Segways. I want to run out there and plead with them to please, please let me have a turn. But, none of them are big enough to pick me up when I fall off, and I know I would, because if “self-balancing” is the operative word, here, I don’t have me none of that. I think I used to.

I remember reading “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” to our kids when they were little and how funny we all thought Charlie’s two sets of grandparents were. They were pictured all tucked up in a humungous four-poster bed, all four in their jammies, with curlers and nightcaps on their heads, eating bowls of cereal. “Ha ha ha, isn’t that silly?” Now, I would look at that and say “Hey, what are you laughing at? I’m taking my Raisin Bran and heading there, right now.”

There are a few advantages, though, to being old. Like when you get to the self-check-out at most of the shops and stores and you get that confused look on your little old wrinkly face, some young person will rush over to help you. I’m not sure if it is the goodness of their hearts or they live in fear that you are going to take the whole system down, but whatever works.

And when you say something really stupid, people no longer look at you like you’re a pariah and need to be confined. They see your white hair and your bent-over self and they think, “Well, you know, she’s old, bless her heart. I’m sure she didn’t mean what she just said”. Yes. Yes, I did. I’ve been waiting decades to say it.

 The cane helps, too. Some people hold doors for you or carry your stuff. They offer to come and pick you up when you no longer drive or get your list when they go to the grocery store. It’s quite nice, actually.

Maybe not quite worth the fact that it takes you two hours to get going in the morning. There’re the exercises, the leg massage to keep the lymph nodes moving, the hearing aids, the compression stockings, the morning pills, the search for the long-handled shoe horn, so you can get your sneakers on, brushing your hair, then using the lint roller to pick up the hair you’ve just covered everything with. And that doesn’t even count the time you spend laying in bed thinking about all the things you have to do to get yourself up and moving.             

You know you’re old when your body and your brain no longer work well enough to do the things you want to do, at the speed and with the grace you want to do them. But, you know you’re still young when you realize you still want to do them, anyway.