This Is Getting Old
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/30/opinion/aging-old-wisdom.html
("What They Don't Tell You About Getting Old")
Well, that was an uplifting read. Excuse me a moment, while I go cry in the corner. That is, before I head to the couch for my afternoon nap.
I am a relative youngster, at 71. I don't worry about getting in or out of taxis, I just wonder how the Hell it is possible to call for an Uber. I seem to have missed the notice that the 21st century happened. My abilities on the computer can match any three year old, ok, most three year olds. The last musicians who really caught my attention haven't played in a band since before the word Watergate entered our lexicon. And the band that still performs has none of the original members. The closest is the grandson of the drummer.
Sleep, at least in the dead of the night, and I are not on speaking terms at the moment. On the other hand, I haven't been awake at the start of late night TV since the days of Carnac the Magnificent.
Every day I wonder who stole half my vocabulary from me. Not just the hard words either. And those pauses in my speaking are not because I have something profound that takes time to percolate, but because I have to wait for some term to meander through the different chambers of my brain before finally reaching my mouth.
People, places and things no longer have names but merely descriptions. Movie titles, movie actors, locations I recently visited, it is all like a game where you have to guess in ten tries or less what I am referring to.
I now have morning pills and evening pills, morning eyedrops and evening eyedrops. And while I used to go from sport to sport, season to season, now I go from season to season talking about the sports I am no longer able to play.
I suddenly find friends that were my age a decade ago are now several years older than me. And I figured out that the reason is that I never paid attention to the discrepancy when we were all pretty much intact. Now every year, every month matters. For the very young, we speak of age in half years. I now understand this is also true at the other end of the spectrum.
So, I don't appreciate your telling me of what I have to look forward to in my later, later years. The good, bad and the ugly, except that it appears the good has pulled an Elvis on us. While it is clear you have retained your sense of humor, it seems that is about all that remains.
The only saving grace about this is, with my memory failing, I probably won't remember much of what you had to say by tomorrow.
Old age is not for the faint of heart. Or for old people.