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One day
you're young and all the world lies before you– next
day you open your mail and find an invitation from
AARP.
That's it.
You're officially old.
Hasn't
happened to you yet? Just wait. It will.
But don't
rush off to the nursing home too fast! There are
actually a lot of advantages to being a member of
the AARP/Medicare crowd, and I'm NOT talking about
those senior menu items that give you a 10% discount
and 50% less food! Yeah, just when we reach an age
where we don't care if we gain a couple of pounds,
they want to cut our portions in half? Wrong!
The first
elements of aging I'd like to discuss are wrinkles
and diminished eyesight, two things people over 50
are always complaining about. Let's be real. If our
eyesight was as good as when we were twenty, we'd
look in the mirror and see those wrinkles! Instead,
when we look in the mirror, it's like when they film Fay Dunaway through
gauze and she doesn't look old…she looks romantic
and dreamy. And the really good news is, our
contemporaries can't see any better than we can, so
we look romantic and dreamy to them, too! Just don't
hang out with any young people who still have good
eyesight.
Another
aspect of aging that gets a bum rap is the way we
can't always access data stored in our brains at
Pentium speed. Someone will ask, "What was the name
of that song that was pretty much the theme song of
the ‘60s about Jupiter and Mars and peace and love?"
And everybody looks away and kind of mumbles and
changes the subject, and ten minutes later when the
conversation has moved on to a discussion of which
cereal has the most fiber, you suddenly retrieve that
data and shout, "Age of Aquarius!" Your friends look
at you a little strangely because most of them have
forgotten the original question. But they're all
impressed that you remembered…whatever it was you
remembered.
This
tendency to forget details is actually another huge
benefit. Say you're out with friends and you have a
little too much to drink, get up on the bar and
dance The Twist, belt out a few old Peggy Lee songs.
Humiliation to the nth degree. But give it a couple
of days and your friends will have totally forgotten
the entire incident! Not like when you were young,
and months later you'd be out with those same
friends, including a new guy you're trying to
impress, and somebody would say, "Hey, remember when
Sally drank all those Margaritas, streaked through
the neighborhood naked and we had to go get her out
of jail? HAHAHA!"
Retaining
memories for a long time is not necessarily a
desirable trait.
Another
advantage of aging is that we receive recognition
and awards we never got when we were young. I've
been a runner for most of my adult life…an
enthusiastic runner, a persistent runner, but a
really bad runner. I used to do lots of those 10K
runs, and I always came in close to last. I consoled
myself with the race tee-shirt.
Then
suddenly I began to win awards! I was still coming
in at the rear of the pack, but I'd get third place
or second place or even first in my age category
because there'd only be a couple of people in my age
category! But I have a great collection of
medals!Beats the heck out of those silly tee-shirts
that don't even fit anymore.
While we're
on the subject of running, let's talk about pain
meds. When you're under the age of 50 and you go
into a doctor's office complaining that you're in
pain, you were out for a run, tore a hamstring and
fell off a cliff, broke your left arm in three places
and cracked your skull, doctor tells you to ice it
and take an aspirin. You protest:
Doctor, I need
something stronger than aspirin! Forget it.
Doctor is totally paranoid you're going to become
addicted to prescription pain meds and sue him for a
bazillion dollars, so he says, fine, take
two aspirin!
Over 50,
especially over 60, you go into a doctor's office
complaining that you stubbed the little toe on your
right foot. Even if you present the big toe on your
left foot for examination…it doesn't matter. Old
people aren't expected to get things straight. That
doctor assumes every muscle in your body probably
hurts.
Give that
woman some vicodin. Maybe a little oxycontin. What
the heck, she's not going to live long enough to get
addicted!
Old people
get good drugs.
We also get
away with things we never could when we were young.
One day I
was driving along, doing 72 in a 55. The older we
get, the faster we have to go because we have less
time to get there. Right?
Next thing
you know, I hear a siren and see flashing lights in
the rear view mirror. So I pull over and here comes
gorilla cop wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses.
"Going a little fast there, weren't you, ma'am?"
"A little,"
I admitted. "Not enough to matter."
"Oh? And
just how fast do you think you were going?"
I may be
old, but I'm not stupid! No way was I going to admit
I was doing 72, and if I'd said 55, he'd have known
I was lying. "Well, I had my cruise control set for
65."
He glared at
me over the tops of those stupid sunglasses. "Ma'am,
this is a 55 mile an hour zone."
I glared
right back at him. "Sir, this is a 7 year old car,
so deducting one mile an hour for every year, that
means I was only going 58 miles an hour. Are you
seriously going to give me a ticket for 3 miles over
the speed limit?"
He blinked a
couple of times, shoved those sunglasses back up on
his nose and stepped away from my car. "What? No! You
were doing 72!"
"Oh, man!
You mean I got it backward? I'm supposed to
add the
years instead of
subtracting
them?"
He moved a
little further away from me as if insanity might be
contagious. "Yeah, yeah, backward. Slow it down,
okay?"
No ticket!
And last,
but not least, the greatest advantage to getting old
is…..
Uh…What were
we just talking about?
I know! The
Age of Aquarius!
Is that the
right answer?
What was the
question?
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