It sure did. Tell an 8 year old they’ll have to wait 6 months for something they’re been looking forward to, and you might as well be telling it’s never going to happen.
It scares me when I dwell on it because if I think of something that happened 20 years ago, it is like fairly recent history in my mind. If I apply that same time going forward, that may be well be beyond the end of my life.
Someone I work with recently said that life is like a roll of paper towels: The closer you get to the end of it; the faster it goes.
While traveling a little while back, I noticed the flight crew of the regional jet I was flying on looked so young that I joked to myself “I guess they’ll finally go full-time once they graduate high school”. They sure didn’t look like Leslie Nielsen from ‘Airplane’.
This so much for me! Generally, I try to save up those questions for when I have to go in for regular checkups. I figure if it’s not bleeding, oozing, or debilitating, it’s not a big deal. So far, I’ve been right.
What’s been most concerning (?) for me is my need for handholds. I feel like I have to hold a rail when taking the stairs. The grab bars in the shower are for more than just hanging up a washcloth. We went out on our boat this weekend, and I made sure at least one hand was on something steadying.
It’s not that I fall a lot - I don’t. But I worry about falling. I’m very aware of what’s on the floor (between dog toys and grandkids’ toys) especially when carrying my grandson. Taking the laundry downstairs is me walking down backwards, one hand on the railing, sliding the dirty clothes basket down with the other. When I bring the clean clothes back up, I rest the basket a couple of steps ahead, step up, lift the basket ahead, lather-rinse-repeat.
No clue why this dominates my thinking, but it does.
We were just talking today - at the end of this month, we’ll have been in this house for 18 years. It’s the longest either of us has ever lived at any address (including childhood homes) but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been here that long. Our daughter was just starting college when we moved here. Now she’s married with 2 kids of her own. How did that happen???
I’ll feel better & more relaxed as I go to bed at night than I will getting up in the morning. I can’t sleep more than 8 hours any more because my back won’t let me.
Handrails on stairs & escalators are actually pretty useful now. I used to avoid them because of germs, but now that I’m carrying hand sanitizer with me, they’re my best friends.
A three and a half mile hike used to be childs play. Now I wonder if I’m gonna die.
My Wife and I hiked a volcano in Hawaii. Hiked down, walked across it and hiked back up. It was rough. Very rough. And I had only one cataract fixed at the time. Depth perception and balance was really wonky.
We where prepared, water, snacks and rain jackets. I used to be on a search and rescue team. I know this stuff. I kept wondering where, and how I would get extracted if I broke an ankle.
Got a new steel roof on the house (Yaaaa) but I needed to get up there to install a satellite dish. It was steep enough that none of my shoes offered enough traction to be safe. I’ve still got climbing gear, but had to buy a new harness because for some odd reason my old one shrunk.
Had to throw a rope all the way over the house to get a good anchor for it.
I could have used the prusik knot, but decided to just buy some ascenders (which can be a pain in the ass anyway).
I used to have such high hopes for humanity. Now I’m just like:“Please just don’t blow it up before I check out of here”. An attitude that would scare the fuck out of my younger self.
About 5 years ago, My Wife and I started playing Chess (total strategy and spatial analysis) and Cribbage and Gin Rummy (strategy a bit of luck and numbers analysis).
We both love it and think it keeps us sharper. About 10 games a week. I really can’t recommend this approach enough. We aren’t learning any new music, classic rock all the way. That and a few beers and we have a perfect evening.
We heard Live for Today by The Grass Roots on the car stereo a bit ago. I thought that this is a state of mind we are heading towards, not away from. Once you get to a certain point, tomorrow starts to get iffy.
Discovering you can now wrench your shoulder, or twist a hip, or worse…IN YOUR SLEEP! Makes me feel like a thousand years old.
My small city is leaping into being metropolis, every downtown surface parking area is now slated to be high rise, expensive condos. They’re everywhere going up.
Normally this would anger us as it’s ruining the vibe of the pretty, smaller city we love. But then, we’re now old enough that we couldn’t care less. It’s not going to be our problem, turns out we lived most of our years through the best of times in the end.
The realization that I may not ever get the benefit of a large public project, but will likely feel all the pain. For example, being a rail commuter into NYC, there is often discussion about a new tunnel, major railroad overhaul, etc. If the project hasn’t begun yet, there is a good chance I’ll be retired before I can experience the benefit…especially in this area. At this point, don’t even start it, please.
When I visited my parents it seemed that going to the doctor was their major source of entertainment. I thought it was funny. Now I’m there.
Better than it used to be though. When I was getting my INR checked every two weeks the receptionists at our big clinic knew me.
This reminded me of another one. With a bald spot that migrating outward on the crown of my head, I need to go to the barber MORE frequently than when I was younger and had more hair. Plus, with tan skin, the white hairs on the sides and on my neck stand out more than the black ones, which means I need the barber to clean up these areas (we call it a “shape-up” in these parts) every 5 days or so.
There was a stand-up comic who joked about this, complaining about waking up one morning and discovering his eye hurt. “What the hell, did I dream about a sharp stick?”
The passing of time is the biggest one for me. I send the bank statements to the company’s accountant every month for her to do the reconciliation. Every month I say to myself, “didn’t I just send these for last month?”
I think of things that will happen in the future and wonder if I’ll be around to see them. Will I see all of my grandkids’ graduations? Probably but if so, what condition will I be in? Which grandkid will have the last wedding I see? It’s creepy and I try not to think about it too much, but those thoughts sneak in.
Ah, yes. The thoughts of my gradual demise into nothingness. What makes me feel better is thinking of how utterly meaningless every human is in the context of the universe. I consider myself lucky to have been the rare collection of atoms and molecules that could experience it, even knowing that it was merely a human experience. Again, completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
I also thinking of being a grandparent one day - might happen, might not - and also remembering that, while I loved my grandparents, by the time I was a teen, they were merely just objects in my life. And they all lived and died with every breath I took. And while I think the experiences of prior generations of my family are interesting, there is no real connection to my life today. Again, knowing the infinitesimal time I will be on this planet, and pretty much guaranteed to be forgotten in 100 years, somehow makes me feel better about the whole aging thing.
I used to really like arguing, but now, I’m just fucking tired of having the same dumb arguments over and over again.
And it’s not just politics and society that I’m talking about. Arguing is a big part of my actual job, and there’s this one applicant who is simply flat-out a fraud. Except that I’m not actually allowed under the rules to just dismiss them as a fraud. I have to come up with other reasons, which they then spend a lot of time finding ways to work around. We’ve been going back and forth like this for literally decades now.
There was a time I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of finding new, legal, ways to call them on their bullshit, but now, I’m just tired of it. I’ve got one case pending in my queue, that I’ve been putting off for weeks now, because every time I think about dealing with their nonsense, I just start sighing dramatically. Part of it is knowing that every hour I waste on them is an hour I’m not doing my job on behalf of the people who aren’t frauds, who are waiting to see how their applications progress.
When I hear people complaining about kids today being glued to their smartphones, I remember all the times in my childhood when I was bored out of my skull and would have given my right arm for a portable video player/video game system/library of books.
