I’m old school.
And I kind of hate it.
Inside, I’m still the same girl I’ve always been—insecure,
naiive, gullible, as optimistic as an ostrich with her head in the sand (if
I can’t see it, it’s not really there.) By now, judging by all the gray hiding
under my faux red hair, I should be halfway to Methuselah in the wisdom department,
but I’m not sure there’s enough evidence to convict me of that.
I don’t actually know if Methuselah was wise, anyway.
The smartest thing he figured out was how to live longer than the rest of the
world. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be 969 before I kick off. Who’d be
around to come to my funeral?
I know. You’re dying to know my age. Fine. Sixty-one
and a quarter. Old, right? I used to think so. When I was young, I sometimes
perused the obituaries in the morning newspaper . . . what? You don’t know what
a newspaper is? I’d roll my eyes at that, but my optometrist told me there’s so
much mileage on them they might get stuck up there. A newspaper was the
internet printed on a piece of paper so big that, with clever folding, it could
be repurposed into a pirate hat.
So, obituaries. I always checked to see how old people
were when they died and sixty-five was about the average. “Yeah, that’s a
pretty ripe old age,” I’d think to my twenty-something self, figuring I had about a hundred more years to live before that happened to me. Then I’d fold up
the newspaper, wear it around the house for a while, eventually toss it in the
trash, and never stop to wonder what kind of neurosis I had that made me wear
pirate hats made out of obituaries.
If sixty-five is a “ripe old age,” then this spring chicken's nearly cooked. Logically, that would mean I only have another three
and three-quarters of a year before my eulogy winds up in somebody’s cyber
trash, too. Do you have any idea how fast the years roll by now? It even feels
like I’m on the downhill side of life.
Yesterday I was halfway through my thirties and homeschooling
my two kids. That afternoon I stood at their graduations. Still clearing the
clutter out of their old bedrooms, I bought a new dress to wear at their
weddings, and by the time the day was over I had seven grandbabies. And I
accomplished all of that while I still felt thirty-five. I mean, I was tired¸
but I was still really young. In my mind. Where it counts.
You’re confused, aren’t you? Maybe you should try some
of my coconut oil. Really clears out the cobwebs. What I’m trying to say is
that my body is doing some weird things that I’m not prepared for simply
because it thinks it has the right to after sixty-one years. But my heart and
my mind and my brain and my second brain all think my body needs to get a grip
and start acting as young as I feel, which as I said before is thirty-five.
I had a friend who warned me the year I was
thirty-nine and seven-eighths that when I hit forty my body would fall apart.
First of all, I rebuked that in the name of Jesus. Secondly, I unfriended her from
my address book. And finally, I had to wonder what kind of cruel cosmic joke
started with a time bomb going off in my body right after I was scheduled to
blow out my birthday candles? Who says my body has to fall apart just because I
graduated my kids, married them off, and transformed myself into a grandmother
in one long day?
And this is my point. The reason it took me over six
hundred words to explain. There is no freaking school for people like me who
are about to get old. There actually is no “old school.” It’s a lie. Because if
there was a school designed to prepare us for menopause and manopause, aching
joints and flabby arms, trifocals and colonoscopies, cardiologists and eight-year-old
checkout clerks who call me “honey” but still bag my groceries with soup cans
on top of my tomatoes—sweet thing, I’d be the first in line when that school
opened for business.
It’s not fair that old age can sneak up on us while we’re still young. I feel like I’ve been set adrift in a Sea of Senility. And let me be
clear—I did not book this cruise. Somebody has let down this generation
of Baby Boomers, and I suspect it’s either the government’s fault . . . or aliens.
That’s all I have to say. Good luck when sixty-one and
one quarter comes your way. Maybe by then there’ll be an Old School diploma
hanging on your shiplap-covered living room wall right above your mid-century
modern lava lamp and antique laptop. You’ll survive old age, too. Just remember
one thing—soup cans go on the bottom, tomatoes on top.
I need a nap.
Thanks to Michael Coghlan for his nostalgic photograph of the actual pencil sharpener I probably used fifty-five and one quarter years ago. The original photo can be viewed through this link:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/37188127474/in/photolist-k6TeEL-YEbSFC-bEr6BG-TKNW7K-8vtfkP-29Dxti-4Ei4E2-4EaEpT-abaV4e-7RaMBm-6cJRoH-dipEZj-3gS6JT-njahZN-RjpCHg-tYv65-bvhBpj-46SjoU-5XLjT9-8DPos1-EnkfA-H2wjLw-5y3zwE-opURkC-6jeTq9-EZktGg-23CvyjW-281Qy19-CWfSpD-23c57Fr-JexA67-251mgrF-23hh4da-23aPT7M-46Ne8z-72fDJj-5GEL1t-BoAxH-21Nptpo-opE7ze
