'What Was Your First Sign Of Aging?'
Wrote a couple things about this a half dozen years ago
2014
SHEESH, twenty fourteen.
Twenty anything.
Never considered getting here.
My father is dying, but more active than me.
My woman is moving slower, but can do laps around me when we walk.
We stare, wondering what the hey each other is saying.
My grandkids are big....huge.
I mostly just wanna kick their hind ends now.
I hurt....in the weirdest places (everywhere).
My gut makes odd, possessed noises....somewhere between freight train and garbage disposal.
I itch......places I no longer can get at.
My vision is not far reaching, nor close range, so I squint with a quizzical look on my grizzled mug.
I can't smell my own farts.
My hands sleep longer than I do.
If something I need falls to the floor, I kick it over by furniture so I can hold on, on the way down.
There is no 'easing' into the lazyboy.
I drink gallons of water to keep my pee stream in the realm of pathetic.
I can't hear much of anything due to that constant freaking ocean noise. Which makes sense, because my ears are starting to resemble conch shells.
I often wondered why old folks are all grumpy and crotchety all the time.
Heh, we've earned it.
Nature
Its joke on aging
T'wards the end of my 64th year.
Gonna retire in 12 months.
Takin' inventory again;
Still got everthing.
Most my hair.
More than half my teeth.
All my innards.
Ten fingers, ten toes.
Gernrly all still intact, just changing a bit.
Either my head is shrinking or my ears are growing.
My toe nails are becoming somewhat hoof like.
I now use industrial side cutters and a rasp to keep those things pared back.
Here's where nature has somehow become unfair.
Wimin tend to fight aging, tooth and nail.
Right up to, oh, say, in their seventies...maybe older.
Some don't.
My wife doesn't.
She doesn't have to.
Her god given beauty from youth is still there...just a bit different, in a relaxed elastic sorta way.
However, most battle on, losing, slowly, bravely inching back, protecting what's left.
But, there comes a time when they really should throw in the trowel, and come to grips that excess putty isn't cutting it.
Poor things, vision gone south, smearing lipstick ear to ear, plucking brows, plastering laugh lines, laugh lines from what must have been some extremely hilarious jokes, getting their sagging eye lids done, only to end up looking like a very surprised Joker's gramma.
And us guys?
We seem to go from self-esteemed Adonises, to gut baring hogs overnight.
but
For some unfair reason, we go from there to becoming 'distinguished', graying temples and all.
We become 'lovable'...'adorable'...still, in some odd doddering way, 'attractive'.
This is looked upon by our mutually aged mates as aggravatingly disgusting.
However,
after that, we proceed to extreme oblivion.
We've all seen these decrepit hairless geriatric dudes in the malls and grocery stores.
Plodding, trudging behind their mates, mates now pert and spry, by the way.
Yeah, these old guys are still above ground, still as oblivious to their looks as they were in high school.
Hair, what wisps that are left, a bit awry.
Suspenders unhooked in the back.
Blueberry jam stain on the front of their plaid shirt, blending quite well with the ever present drool spots.
Shuffling, farting...completely unaware, as their sense of hearing and olfactory organs are long gone...hopefully it's just farting.
I'm not there yet....at least nobody has complained....not that I'd hear them.......