A friend of mine once said when he got old he was going to sit on his back porch, drink beer and throw beer cans at buzzards. I’m not sure that I’ll still have the energy for that.
As Ed H. said just having missed a three foot putt at age 83, “I’m just glad to still be on this side of the grass. He died three months later. Don’t worry, this is not about the inevitability of death. It’s worse. I’m going to write about what happens to a man-child as he enters the autumn of his life.
This may not seem like such a big deal to the feminine segment of my limited audience, unless, that is, you happen to be married to one of us that is going through this particular slice of life, and groaning all the while. But to me, it’s a pretty big deal. I can still remember throwing a ball to home plate from center field on one bounce. I revel in the memory (now much enhanced) of jumping high enough to grab the rim of the basketball goal. And now. Now it takes about thirty seconds and substantial effort to get back on my feet after getting on my hands and knees to insert a DVD into the player.
So what symptoms did the patient present with, asked the Doctor of Life. Well the patient said, “some things that are supposed to be big have gotten small, and some things that are small have gotten big, and some things just don’t work at all”. The DOL squinched his eyes and frowned while rubbing his chin looking puzzled. “You’re going to have to tell me more.”
“Let me give you just one example” the patient explained. “When I was nineteen and in college, my room mate and I used to swap clothes. We were both perfect fits…28” waist, 38” chest, 14 1/2 neck and 32” sleeve. We wore medium pullovers, 9B shoes and 7 1/8 caps.” “What’s wrong with that” the DOL impatiently inquired.” “Nothing at all, if it had stayed that way, but now my waist size is what my chest used to be, my chest has shrunk, my neck is so big I can barely get a tie around it. I couldn’t even get one arm in a medium anything, the last shoes I bought were 10D’s, and my head has expanded so much so that I now can only wear a 7 5/8 or larger”.
The DOL responded impatiently that it was normal for the shape of the body to change as one aged. “Maybe you have a point there, doc, but what about the other stuff?” “Whaddya mean, the DOL demanded?” “It’s the innards, I think. I used to be able to watch a whole baseball game and drink a six pack without needing to use the biffy. Now I’ve had to give up beer entirely, and if I make it an hour before hot footing it to the john, I’m lucky.” The DOL shrugged and said, “that’s just your prostate”. “I know that. I even know that its size determines a lot of other stuff that goes on down there, but the problem is…..mine used to be the size of an acorn and now, I’d reckon, it’s about like an avocado, and it plays holy hell with my plumbing.” “OK, you’ve I get your point, but do you have any examples of things that used to be big that’ve shrunk?” “Whoa, I’m not going there doc, this is a G rated blog after all, but come to think of it, I do have another example.” “Memory, my memory has shrunk…no doubt about it.” “I used to be able to give you the winner of every World Series from 1950 on, and now I can’t remember who’s playing in this year’s series even though I watched it last night. Three out of five times I can’t remember all my grandkids names, the restaurant I ate in last week is a nameless blur, and I have to write down the space number if I park anywhere other than my own garage.
“Well, memory loss, particularly short term memory loss, is another physiological phenomena of aging in humans,” the DOL intoned pedantically. Tell me something new, I thought. This guy is a dud, and he’s supposed to be the smart dude with all the answers. What can he be? 45, 50, maybe 55 tops. How can he know anything at that age?
I was starting to feel pretty good about this aging thing in spite of the prodding I got from the DOL until I ran across an article in the NY Times which opined that people born in western civilizations, and I guess Texas fits that description, will now experience four stages of life rather than the traditional child, adult, old age schema. Henceforth we must prepare for five stage: childhood, adult, old age, and old, old age. Can you imagine. If I have this many aches and pains in what I consider to be somewhere between adult and old age, what will old, old age have in stock for me.
I guess that’s better than one traditional description I found of the stages of a woman’s life…..virgin maiden, loyal wife, mother, crone, grieving widow. It seems to me that this moves too fast from the crone stage to the grieving widow stage. What happened to the old man in this case? And I’m not sure of the dividing line between mother and crone. Come to think of it I’m not sure I want to know.
As for me, I’m going to go with the “ages of man” devised by Oguz (pronounced Ohzz) Khan, the founder of what is present day Turkmenistan.
Childhood……………………………0-13
Adolescence…………………………13-25
Youth……………………………………25-37
Maturity…………………………………37-49
Age of the Prophet…………………46-62
Age of Inspiration…………………..62-73
White-bearded Elder…………….73-85
Old Age………………………………..85-97
Age of Oguz Khan……………….97-109
I might add that at the age of 97 my new hero Oguz was still adding new brides to his collection. That’s probably not in the cards for me, but I rather like the sound of Age of Inspiration and even White-bearded elder.
I agree with my friend Ed, this side of the grass is really pretty good after all, despite the aches and pains and diminished capacity….. particularly considering the alternative.
