Getting Old Isn’t For Sissies
I remember the good old days of my youth, back when I was ten feet tall and bulletproof. Time and circumstance taught me that I was neither, but sometimes I miss those days when I was too dumb to know just how much I didn’t know, and too careless to care.
I’m reminded of that now when I get out of bed in the morning and my body snaps, crackles, and pops more than a bowl of cereal. I hear my Dad making those groans and sighs he did every morning, and then I remember that the old man has been gone nearly 25 years, and realize it’s me making those noises! Me? No way! Those are my Dad’s noises!
Terry and I were talking the other day about how everything has to have a name and a cure these days. I can’t just be stiff and sore because I abused my body as a youngster, and now that I’m getting older, it has come back to haunt me.
What we used to call paratroopers’ knees, from too many hard landings, now must be some sort of cartilage damage or deficiency, and a good arthroscopic surgeon could probably fix that right up.
Those banged up vertebrae must be reason for some hack to take a hacksaw to me. So what if a couple of Advil makes them tolerable until I loosen up? That’s just treating the symptoms, let’s treat the root cause of the problem! All it takes is a minor incision, a hammer and chisel, and few months of traction!
When I was a kid, I never heard of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and depression. If I hurt, I was told to walk it off, if I was tired, go take a nap. And if I ever said I was depressed, the immediate response would have been “I’ll give you something to be depressed about!”
Every time I turn on the television I am bombarded by advertisements promising this pill or that potion will make me happier, make me as randy as a sailor on shore leave, and even make my hair grow back!
There are just as many commercials from attorneys telling me that if that pill or potion made me happy, hairy, and studly, but now I have to wear a diaper and I hear voices in my head, we’ll sue the SOBs who sold it to me!
There is a huge industry that has grown up around helping us deny that our bodies are machines, and that as we get a few miles on those machines, they let us know it. Just take this pill and all of your problems will go away.
An even larger industry has been created so we can sue the people who sold us the pill in the first place. And if we win, we can take the 20% or so the lawyer didn’t keep and just go away.
Not me. I prefer to age gracefully, thank you just the same. Even though, if you were to ask Miss Terry, she’d tell you that there is nothing graceful about me getting my body into an upright position every morning. Getting old isn’t for sissies or wimps!
Thought For The Day – Your best friend may not always tell you what you want to hear, but rather what you need to hear.
