My eyesight’s been lousy since kindergarten so I got a running start on that decrepitude. Forget getting LASIK when vision starts slipping; mine skidded and went splat before I hit first grade. Actually seeing well was a real boost, though.
My worst early warning signs are all physical. I’ve always been a misfit so much of pop culture bonding sailed right past me from the start. (Experience social senility early: be a nerd!)
My cholesterol levels started soaring, even though my diet and exercise habits didn’t change. Genetics kicked in with a vengeance, folks. Strokes run through both sides of my family like lightning. So I upped the exercise, adapted diet to draconian levels…and the bad cholesterol didn’t budge. No wonder so many branches on the ol’ family tree crashed. I’m now on medication and it sucks. Oh, it’s working fine but having to take pills in the morning feels OLD.
It’s also become somewhat difficult to maintain my weight where I want it. Used to be I could just eat a bit more lightly for a week or two, do a few extra exercises and the unwanted pounds would come right off. No more, baby. I have to really monitor my food intake for the first time. This is really whiney because it’s been fairly easy before now. The same basic formula still works–diet and exercise–but the levels have upped on me.
[rant] And the timing purely sucks. I don’t zip around for the pure joy of it as automatically anymore. It takes more oomph to get moving. But I still love food. I love cooking: choosing ingredients, handling them, the whole process of putting them together. I love exploring food, especially if somebody prepares it. The zest for good food and drink hasn’t braked along with the physical slowing.
And I recently noticed my left ankle sometimes clicks when I walk up stairs. It doesn’t hurt but it sounds like a damned cricket. It’s annoying, embarrassing and there’s no damned reason for it. What a swell momento mori to nip at my heels…ankle: something that sounds like a demented insect. Bah. [/rant]
I’m so with you. Couple of years ago, I whined to my mom that I was entirely too young to have a kid turning 30. “No sympathy from me!” she said. “I’ve got a GRANDchild turning 30.”
First of all…You GO girl!
I felt old when my place of employment hired the latest crop of Lpn’s and I realized I was biologically old enough to be their mother.
I’m only 30. I’m not old yet… I feel old when someone calls me ma’am or Miss <enter last name>. Sometimes when I look at my kids and realize my baby is 9 and my oldest is 11 I feel not so young. Yet as I said I don’t feel old. Last year for my best friend’s 30th birthday I sent her 2 dozen assorted roses. She was having a bit of a time turning 30. Her biggest fear was getting black roses. SO I sent bright cheery ones. It was a hint that maybe I was getting older. Then I thought, when my baby turns 18 and graduates high school I will be 40. Young enough to go do all the things I put on hold. yet old enough to have the money now to do them. I think I have finished the first third of my life. If I take care of myself I am fairly sure I’ll have 60 more years to go.
If you’re a sports fan, as I am, it’s disconcerting to realize that
The SONS of your favorite pro athletes are now professional athletes themselves!
There are guys younger than you playing in the Old-Timers Day game at Yankee Stadium.
The quarterback you just called “a washed up, over the hill has-been” is about ten years younger than you are.
Of course, my first big moment of realization wasn’t sports related. Rather, it came around 1996, when I looked at the top ten singles and the top ten albums on the Billboard charts in the newspaper, and thought, “I don’t know who ANY of these people are.”
For some scary perspective: When I was 18, back in 1979, the big band music of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey seemed laughably outdated. Well, do the math- to an 18 year old today, Led Zeppelin is Glenn Miller!
One other thing: when you’re young, you may get retirement statements in the mail, but you tend to throw them away without looking at them closely. COme on, when you’re 25, retirement seems like an eternity away.
The first time you actually open and read correspondence about your retirement plan, you’ll know you’re getting old!
