OLD AGE

I walked by the mirror the other day and couldn’t help noticing a stranger looking back at me. He was an old man with gray hair and a wrinkled brow. I knew it could not be me because I haven’t aged a bit since I turned twenty. At least I think I haven’t aged, I seem to be forgetting things lately. Still there he was in my mirror pretending to be me.

OK I’ll admit that I might have aged a little bit, ok maybe a lot, alright enough that my warranty is running out. I need glasses to see, I can only hear half of what is said to me, and my knees are man made. I am at the point where family reunions are at funerals and all the important people in my world are children. I am at the point that if I’m going to bend down to tie my shoes I look around to see what else I can do while I’m down there.

The bad part about aging is that I can ramble on telling a story and no one knows what I’m talking about. The good part about aging is that no one knows what I’m talking about. I’ve reached the point where most of my audience weren’t born when the things I’m talking about happened. It is also the age that gives one the right to say “I remember when” and than tell about walking five miles through the snow to school.

There are two rules for life that I’ve learned recently. “Always eat your desert first” and “you have to get old, you just don’t have to act that way”. I have lived long enough to start enjoying life and not worrying about what others think.  It’s a right I’ve worked for, I’ve earned, and no one is going to deny me of it.