Have Fun Getting Old

For years and years I fought the fact I was getting old. I’d protest loudly is someone even hinted that I was getting to be an old coot.  I’d skip down the street, jump up in the air like the guy from the Teeter-Hang Ups commercial who is 74 and jumps around like he’s 35 merely because he hangs upside down like a bat on some odd looking thing he made and called Teeter Hang Ups but looks like a basket on a stick.

Many of you never saw this commercial so you’re thinking I’m just making this up, but I swear it’s true. See for yourself. I think the guy snorts something or gets drunk before he jumps – there is just no way in the world that hanging upside down is going to make you younger. It may make you stronger as anything which does not kill you makes you stronger so they say, but where is the evidence of that?

I live a very boring life. Getting older adds to the boredom since I’m not old enough to have lost my short term memory, my mind, nor am I young enough to care – I’m a tween.  You know that they call kids between 10 and 12 “tweens”? Right? Well sort-of old people like me are tweens  too. We are tween lots of things. We are tween sanity and dementia, Alzheimer’s, and that old pine box – the great equalizer. Whether you’re filthy rich or dirt poor, you can be sure when they shove your embalmed carcass into the cold hard ground,  we’re all equal – don’t matter what kind of grave stone you have. Yes, Grammar Police, I said “Don’t”,  not “Doesn’t” because I’m too old to care what you think of my grammar.

I try to find things to do when I’m not fixing computers or writing newsletters or short stories – which end up unfinished and stored in obscure files buried on a USB drives tossed in a drawer. One thing I do a lot of is is read, but that’s becoming harder because I fall asleep after five or six pages. It’s really a long ride to read a 600-page novel like that. Darn good book, I say to myself as I drift off to the absolute absolution of sleep. Of course, two hours later I have to get up and go to he bathroom – or should I say stagger to the bathroom. When I was in my 30’s,  staggering to the bathroom had a much different meaning.  My bladder don’t work right anymore, my body don’t work right anymore, and soon my mind won’t work right  anymore- and it’s hard for me to muster up enough energy to even care anymore. As and old friend oft reminds me – it is what it is.

(Phone’s ringing. ‘cuse me. “Hello? Grammar police? Yeh I know I don’t use don’t correctly in this screed. You know what? I surely don’t care.” Which reminds me — Don’t call me surely! Remember “Airplane!” the movie? )

Anyway, I’m so sorry for the interruption.

One day last week I decided to take a day-trip to one of our local nursing homes, just of the halibut, no, no, no, just to see some people I used to know who are holed up there escaping the pressures of trying to live out their lives in bodies that don’t work right anymore. I won’t mention their names not that they’d care, they don’t always remember their names either. I have not yet reached that stage. But for the sake of this little essay, I’m going to call them Rob and Joy. Why Rob and Joy? Because each has only three letters and I’m lazy…why type a name like Emmanuel or Isabellita? If you want names like that, you write your own essays!

Now let me tell you, Rob and Joy are OLD. Not old like me, but REALLY old. They’ve been married for 70 years or so – in short, they’ve been married longer than I’ve been alive. When they got married, FDR was president and eggs were 64 cents a dozen. And I’m not making that up. Here check it out! Sixty-four cents a dozen! Paul McCartney was 2 when they got married, now he’s even older than me.

(That’s right ME, not I! )

So I get to the nursing home -unfortunately- at lunch time. They’re having turkey and mashed potatoes and soupy corn which you all know as cream-style corn. Not many of the residents have teeth and none of them have good teeth. Some of them have good dentures but most of them leave them in a glass of Polident on the night stand. Too much trouble popping them in an our anymore, after all who cares?

The food looks mushy to me, and I understand why. So anyway, the nurse’s aide or whatever she is, asks if I’d like a tray. I can get one for $2.00. Two Dollars! I can get a whole tray of food for $2.00. I can’t pass it up I’m hungry. While I’m waiting I watch Rob and Joy dig in. Rob looks at Joy and asks her what the heck he’s eating. She says, “It’s turkey, honey” (how sweet!) and Rob looks at her with a serious expression and asks her if it’s Thanksgiving already. It’s only April – I know it, apparently Joy knows it, but Rob is oblivious.

Rob looks at me with a mouth full of mashed potatoes and says “Who the heck are you?” (He uses a stronger word than heck but the last time I used that word I got emails condemning me for my foul mouth – or fingers as the case may be).  I told him who I was and he has no idea. Joy looks at me and then looks at Rob and tell him that I used to their neighbor back on Chestnut Street. “You’re the damned fool that nearly burned down my storage shed, ain’t ya?”

I have no idea what he means so I just say I don’t remember. He looks at me and a big hunk of turkey falls out of his mouth and onto his pants which he brushes off onto the floor. Joy looks at him with a compassionate look and at me with a look of “how long are you going to stay, can you tell he doesn’t remember you  or even like you”. I’m not comfortable but I’m trying to get a feel for my future here so I stay.

Luckily, just about then, the nurse’s aide brings in my tray of mushy turkey, mashed potatoes, soupy corn and green Jello-o. I thank her. The food does not actually smell too badly. I like things i don’t have to chew because chewing at my age is a lot of work. I could have eaten the entire meal through a straw. It was salty and it made me thirsty and the weak coffee had grown lukewarm.

“It’s Thanksgiving, where are the kids?  They always have more important things to do than come see us!” Rob mused. “Honey, it’s not Thanksgiving. Easter was just last Sunday.” Joy said looking into his filmy gray eyes. He wipes his nose and clears his throat a dozen times and snorts something about the kids not being there for Easter. Joy tells him that not only were the kids there but the grand-kids too – they even brought an Easter basket filled with candy. “Well, where is it then?” he says grumpily. “You ate it, Rob. Don’t you remember?” He doesn’t remember. He drops his Jell-o on the floor.

He looks at me and asks who I am again  and I tell him. The Jell-O on the floor really bothers him and he grumbles about it. He can’t bend over to reach it and them _______ nurse know it. They’re going to leave it there until he slips on it and kills himself.

I look at Joy and she’s all but telling me to leave. We hear snoring and Rob has fallen asleep, his toothless mouth gaping. Joy grabs a blanket and takes almost 5 minutes to walk the 10 feet to where Rob is sleeping. I was going to help her but I think she’d have slapped me.

I decide to leave my old friends and go home. On the way home I start thinking how much like childhood being old is. It’s almost like being a baby all over again – the mushy food, the diapers, the groping for words, the caregivers. And almost everything is new every day. If you forget yesterday then everything is new today.

I get home, open my book, read five pages and fall asleep. Two hours later my bladder calls and I stagger to the bathroom. I’m having so much fun getting old.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll hang upside down in a basket on a stick.