As I was sitting watching TV with my soulmate we were having a conversation about something, the topic of which I now forget. I turned to him and said, “If I could remember it long enough to write it down upstairs it would make a good blog subject.” But, alas, it had vanished into that canyon of my brain where all things forgotten dwell.
Forgetting is the worst part of getting old for me. Oh, wait, I remember what we were talking about – it was about my socks. I was sitting in the chair and my soulmate was on the sofa. When I put my feet up on his lap I noticed that my right sock had slipped down to my ankle. “Look,” I said, “I am officially old. My socks are migrating down to my ankles like an old lady.” We laughed, but somehow it wasn’t funny to me. I suddenly felt old. And then, I farted.
Geez, I really am getting to be one of those smelly old ladies like what’s her name of Hallmark card fame.
I’m getting cataracts, my hearing is impaired due to tinnitus, and to add insult to injury, my hair is thinning out on top of my head. My one saving grace is that my hair is still actually mouse belly brown with only a hint of gray that is hardly noticeable. And, my hairdresser wants me to color my hair to add “body.” I know I need “body” in my hair, but I really need a complete “body” transplant.
My “girls” are so far south they are playing footsies with the Emperor penquins, I lost my waistline ages ago, and my belly fat gives Santa a run for his money. I have neuropathy in both legs and every once in a while my hands tingle. Today, my chiropractor told me the bad news that I had DISH (Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis) – simply put, calcium deposits on my thoracic vertebrae. The good news, he said, was that I was “old” and I wouldn’t suffer as long with it as say a 30-year old. I mentally hit him (sorry, Jesus) because if I actually hit him my arthritic right hand would have hurt like the devil.
Well, I can put up with all these physical symptoms of getting old-er, but the forgetting part drives me nuts. How is it that I can get up from my chair to go into the next room to…..what? Get something, do something, who knows? It goes out of my brain in a nano-second. And remembering names – forget it. I was never good with names anyway and now I’m worse. Just this morning I thought of four things I wanted to tell my doctor at my next visit. By the time I walked twenty feet to my desk to write them down I could only remember three.
Getting old really is as bad as the comics depict. Getting old is not golden. Seventy is not the new fifty. And, I forget what else there is about getting old that I don’t like but, I do remember that I don’t like it. Oh, yes, that card lady’s name is Maxine!