Aging With Grace BERNARD EPPS
Another birthday. I'm told this one qualifies me as a genuine antique. One more and I can become a picturesque old ruin.
One of the greatest consolations of age is the privilege to be grumpy. I feel no longer obliged to suffer fools gladly, and have a few choice words put by for the next visit from Jehovah's Witnesses.
But the privilege attracts damn fools who offer solutions for every complaint. I don't want solutions, dammit! I want sympathy. When I complain of getting old, they think deeply for a moment and say "Well nobody's getting any younger." Poppycock! Everybody's getting younger but me - teachers, lawyers, priests, judges, politicians, even newspaper editors are much younger that they used to be... In my day, grandparents were wrinkled old fossils. Now many are younger than I am.
My idea of a doctor is kindly old Doc Adams from Gunsmoke with his white hair, deep understanding and vast experience. In the hospital, they sent me a little slip of a girl who should've been playing hopscotch. I kept wanting to pick her up and bounce her on my knee. It's not easy treating a consultation with proper gravity when you keep wanting to play horsey with your doctor. "This is the way the gentlemen ride; trot, trot, trot, trot."
They also tell me the memory is the first thing to go. I forget what it was they said comes in second. First you forget names, they said. Then you forget your teeth. Then you forget to pull your zipper up. Then you forget to pull your zipper down. That's enough to make anybody grumpy.
But, I've lots of time yet. I see on the news that the Queen Mum has now lived longer than any other member of the English monarchy and will be celebrating her 98th birthday this summer. A testament to the preservative powers of gin. Writer and historian Bernard Epps of Lennoxville, Quebec, is really a pussycat.
Copyright © 1998 Bernard Epps/Log Cabin Chronicles/7.98 |