Here's something I wrote last summer but for some reason never got around to publishing. It seems somewhat timely now that a couple of degenerating vertebrae are keeping me away from my computer chair.
Age
Time has its subtle ways of letting you know you aren’t as young as you used to be. The jeans get harder to button, the joints begin to complain when overworked, and there’s the thinning of hair north and south. So you work out a little more, take aspirin, content yourself with the notion that your hair always was a bit thick and unruly. Old? Me? Nah.
Less subtle than time are children. Today I spent three hours at the playground with my five-year-old grandson. When there were no kids his age, I played with him, climbing up through the wooden maze, sliding down the slides, being a witch or “Queen of the Playground” as he dictated. I felt pretty smug that at 62 I could keep up with him. As I stood at the end of a wooden tunnel near the top of the grand structure (catching my breath), a new entrant on the scene, a six-year-old grinning the fanged smile of a kid missing his two front teeth, burst from the tunnel on all-fours and sounded a fierce roar. I jumped in faked terror, and the kid gleefully rose to his feet and shouted for all the playground to hear, “MOM! I just scared the crap out of this old lady!”
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Go away kid, ya bother me…
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Thursday, December 06, 2007
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9 comments:
LMAO! What an adorable child. If I were you I would have wanted to punch him.
Statistically speaking you are not old. You likely have at the very least another 20 years left. Besides if 40 is the new 30 then 60 must therefore be the new 50.
Whim - Maybe those missing front teeth of his didn't fall out with "age"...
Whiz,
As my kids say: ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing). No one would blame you for helping his front teeth to become missing after that comment. After seeing you take that kayak down from your car's roof (even after I offered to give you a hand) and watching you paddle across that lake by yourself, you definitely don't qualify as old. You could probably paddle rings around me, given your energy. Perhaps, experienced is a much better term. How's your photography coming along since your camera dried out? Are you getting much snow up in those beautiful north woods?
An old friend of mine (with bad habits) who is visiting me, landed in the hospital last night. Yep. Ambulance and fire dept. outside my house at 9:15.
She's your age (which is only 10 years older than me)~ but she has emphysema, etc. etc., and will probably be on oxygen soon. I just hope she doesn't blow herself up lighting a cigarette.
Anyway, my point IS that I've never had good female role models. I come from the south...where they smoked and drank their way through life. I smoke as well, and hope to quit.
Getting to know you through your blog has proven what I've always known~ there were other ways I could have lived my life...and still can attempt to...
Your degenerating vertebrae comes from either living life as fully as you can or a simple aging matter. You're not infirm because you take living for granted.
I thank you for showing me that in every post....and of course, you're still in my thoughts.
Re: this post... you say it was written last summer? Wonder if that kid has ANY teeth left?
I daresay that if you'd flashed him your thinning Southern Hair, you'd have scared him profoundly more right back.
Then you could have hollered to your grandson, "Hey, look, I just scared the crap out of this thoughtless weenie!"
I laughed aloud at this post, then laughed again at Jocelyn's comment!
My Grandson is quite diplomatic, he asks me "what about when you were new, like me?"
lol that's pretty funny. I've been called mister lately by youngsters I see.. oh well.
LOL:):):)
that's funny!
hope you are healing well and can continue to enjoy further antics with your grandson.
ROFL OMG I would have probably burst out laughing at that kid's audacity! (Of course, on the other hand, I don't like hearing kids talking like that, so it would have sunk in later, but laughter would have probably been my first response.)
I hope your back heals & stops hurting. The (82 year old) mother of one of my coworkers recently had to have 2 titanium plates put in her back because of dissolving vertebrae. And DH should have already had the surgery himself, but we don't have the $$ for him to stop working long enough to have the surgery. And he's only 33. I hope your back doesn't deteriorate to the point of needing the same surgery. Not a pleasant use of one's time, that.
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