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It’s Okay to Be a Prune

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.” ~ George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

I was walking past our local gym the other day — we only have one gym in our little town – and noticed a sign in the window: “Check out our Senior Discount: Save 15% or more on memberships”. And that starts me thinking.

If you’re over 40, you’ll get this, and if you’re not, this will be as alien to you as Martian ground moss, so you may as well stop reading right now — unless you want to snicker, of course.

There are some people who think they can remain youthful by joining a gym and working out. The thought of that just makes me tired and achy. Fighting aging is about as senseless to me as fighting a pride of hungry lions. I’m going to lose — and that means I’m going to be dead. This is a serious game, you know.

Anyway, after seeing the discount for seniors at this particular gym, I altered my walking so as to pass this gym every day to observe the comings and goings of the teetering old prunes who think they can fight that pride of lions and win. Actually there are many nublile young lasses coming and going and some think this is the reason I altered my walking route. I want to tell you that while I enjoy that kind of scenery, I do not want to be seen some balding, fat, fossil, in red pants, chasing some 21-year-old waitress.

Moving on…

Over time I note many older men and women going into the gym. And I’m amused. So I start thinking how totally futile all this jumping up and down and crunching and tread milling is. And if you asked any one of them why the do it, they’ll say it makes them feel better, which I know is not true.

How do you think the companies that make BenGay and Icy Hot are able to send their entire executive staffs to St. Thomas every winter for “corporate meetings”? These older folks don’t go to the gym to feel better — they go there so they don’t look like the withered old prunes they really are.

I know that beauty is only skin deep. When covered with clothing they may look younger than their age, but when you peel back the layers of the onion, so to speak, you still have a wrinkled old prune.

But if you ask them they will insist they do it for the health benefits — it makes them feel better. Right. That’s why if you followed each one for 24 hours a day for a week you’d find them putting on wrinkle cream every night and getting Botox treatments. Do wrinkle cream and Botox treatments make them feel better?

You know what makes me angry? People who go to a funeral homes and look at the corpse and saying: “Doesn’t he/she look natural?” That’s like someone looking at some seventy-something, wearing his pants up around his chest and saying — “Doesn’t he look good for his age?” What does that mean?

Let all of us who are aging do so gracefully. Our energies could be better applied to expanding our minds, than in trying to make us look young again. Wearing bright yellow pants and white shoes or wearing ball caps to cover balding heads, isn’t going to help you woo the 20-somethings. If you’re an old prune, only $$$ is going to help you do that.

And this is for the women: Most of you aren’t cougars, and I thank you for that. In my state we have a university called Ohio University. Every May they have Mother’s Weekend -no it’s not a Mother’s Day thing!. If you should be unlucky enough to visit the campus on Mother’s Weekend, you will see the ghastly sight of 40-something females cooching up to young, foolish boys who are 18 or 19 but look 15 or 16. The wonders of beer and margaritas combined with testosterone and estrogen cannot be overstated. Although, if you’re looking for something to do on a weekend in May, and you like this sort of thing, visit Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. And you think I’m kidding don’t you?

Maybe theses older women, as Andy Rooney once wryly observed, “…realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.”

All of us over 40 have blown it. We’ve wasted our youth. It’s gone, and no amount of exercise, medicine, makeup, plastic surgery, snake oil, or Botox is going to bring it back. We might be able to polish up the shell a little, but the insides are slowing decaying. And though our parents and grandparents tried to tell us to savor our youth, we blew it anyway. We had no idea what they meant. We were invincible. We were young. We had forever ahead of us. We were never going to be prunes like them. Forever young. “…the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.” We never knew the angel of youth until she was gone. And boy is she gone!

I can remember when I was 15 or 16 and most of my high school teachers were in their mid-30’s to mid-40’s. I thought they were morose, melancholy, old folks who never grew up and never finished school. Now I look at old High School Yearbooks and the teachers look young — and some of my female teachers were hot, and I never notice! Where the heck was I back in those days? I was lost in the haze of youth.

So I say surrender gracefully to the years — trying to fend off getting old is not only a losing battle, but makes you look silly. It’s much better to be a wrinkled-up old prune, than a wrinkled-up old prune trying to look like 30-something.

One thing that age should impart to all of us is wisdom. Apparently it doesn’t impart it to everyone.

Hey! It’s OK to be a prune.

“Proud to be a Prune”  That’s my motto.