One day I woke up and I was old! I don’t know the moment it happened or even how it happened, but it did, and I was not happy.
Oh, sure, there had
been little signs. Anyone who is old knows what I am talking about. At first,
the packaging on products started getting smaller, and then the recipes I
printed had text I couldn’t even read. Okay, signs also got harder to read,
sure, but a pair of over the counter reading glasses remedied that.
Look around you. Lots
of people have glasses. That’s not an old people thing. The print kept getting
smaller and the only books I could read were large print, but I was okay… for a
while. Then, one day I heard this odd noise as I was getting up from the couch.
It was a crunching sound... or should I call it crackling? I sat down again and
got back up. There it was again. Okay, maybe I had noticed it once or twice
before but it sure was getting louder, and it was coming from my knees. I did
have that knee injury when I was about 16 and that was just let me see….45
years ago. That’s when I remember thinking, “That sure was a long time ago.”
Denial can be very powerful.
I continued to ignore
the signs and adjusted my thinking to accommodate the changes that had become
part of my daily life. No longer did I enjoy shopping for clothes. After all,
how many pairs of pants could one person wear? I continued to tell myself those
extra twenty pounds had nothing to do with my new found sense of thriftiness.
After all I was still not old.
But somewhere along
the way I became eligible for things, like the senior coffee at McDonalds and
“Senior Day” at the grocery store. That didn’t bother me as much as the fact
that they simply took my word for the fact that I was a senior. They didn’t
even ask for I.D. and the cashier called me honey. Ah, I think back to
the days when I was 16 and wanted to be treated as an adult and with equality,
and how that word would have offended me, but you know… she smiled when she
said it and it made me feel good.
Okay, so I guess I’m
old and I don’t know as much as I thought I would at this age, but I know I
like to cook, and I make a pretty good meatloaf!
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