Hey you crows! Get off my lawn!

It’s no use denying it any longer: I am old.

I’d like to say it crept up on me and came as a complete surprise, but that wouldn’t be true (and I’m now too old to have time for lies). No, I walked right into it, loud and proud, and there is no one else to blame but my wife.

Yup, it’s all the Missus’ fault.

She’s the one who led me down this path to the Final Destination of aching backs, stiff limbs, and an inability to hear people clearly in a loud room.

She’s the one what done it.

You see, a few weeks ago the Missus had the ‘brilliant’ idea that turning off our electronics and going to bed at 9pm would be conducive to both our mental and physical health. That infamous ‘blue light’ emitted by LCD panels would stop disrupting our circadian rhythm and the over-the-top insanity and blatant stupidity of social media would stop riling us up and eating away at our peace of mind.

It seemed like a great idea at the time. Just because we were in bed at 9 didn’t mean we had to turn out the lights and go to sleep. Only ancient people go to sleep at 9pm, and I’m not there yet! No, we could do other things, such as read, meditate, converse, and re-center ourselves, all to recover from the day that had just passed.

In her defense, I wholeheartedly embraced this plan, blissfully unaware of the dire consequences that awaited me. 9pm? Phone is off. Tablet is dark. Teeth are brushed. And I am under the covers, holistically experiencing myself and the current book I’m reading until such time that I can’t keep my eyes open, and the book drops to the floor while I blindly reach out to turn off the bedside lamp.

The change this new routine introduced was remarkable. In the span of a few days, I went from a charming, avowed night owl to a bright-eyed, worm-catching early bird that is the envy of the murder of crows loitering around my front yard, eyeing me angrily as I deprive them of a food source.

It didn’t take long before I realized I was in trouble.

I had became my parents, who I can’t call after 8pm because they’re in bed by then. And my grandparents, who I rarely had occasion to call when they were alive but definitely, when I did call, did so before 8. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

And, you know, old.

Unfortunately, with this transition to old age came inevitable, soul-crushing wisdom. Wisdom that helpfully reminded me that I am mortal and felt compelled to continue by pointing out that old mortals are closer to death than young mortals. Knowing Death is now just around the corner had a moderately deleterious effect on my mental well-being.

In other words, it freaked me out and left me in a panic to find ways an old fogie such as myself could delay that inevitable intersection between myself and the Universal Adversary.

I started to exercise. Not in some vain attempt to improve my physique and impress the fairer sex. Oh no, those days are long gone.

I was exercising solely for my health.

Promotional poster for the Oscar-winning movie, “Ass”

So now when I involuntarily wake up at 5am every gorram morning, I check my pulse (yay, still not dead!), drag my wrinkly, sagging ass into the bathroom where I take all the anti-inflammatory medications needed to reduce the mobile island of pain my body has become to something closer to a tolerable, unending ache, followed by the anti-diarrhea pills that counter the side effects of the anti-inflammatories, get dressed, and then, and only then, submit myself to the dragging and pulling by a large, disgustingly youthful dog that wants to walk faster than I am capable of.

Much faster.

Actually, I do this twice. By evening, the pain of my morning exertions has faded enough that my fear of dying rises to the forefront again and I repeat the dreadful process. Except instead of starting by getting out of bed, in the evening I finish by getting into bed and the circle of hell life is complete.

I call these walks, but really, when you become a man of my advanced years, it’s more of a halting shuffle.

After a couple of weeks, I found I no longer had to force myself to hit the sheets at 9. Instead, I find that when this witching hour arrives, I’m genuinely exhausted and eager to retire. Sure, the anxiety that Death may come for me while I slumber colors my dreams, but it isn’t enough to keep my broken body awake.

Not that my night owl progeny respect this new schedule. Oh no. They don’t start stomping around and shouting at their computer games until 9:30, and they get progressively louder from there.

The Missus is almost as bad.

That’s right, the Missus. She’s not in bed with me at 9 as part of the routine she came up with. Oh no. She’s still up because it turns out the “screens off at 9” policy didn’t agree with her, she needs the blue light to combat some sort of vitamin deficiency, and apparently all the interesting news and social media posts happen late at night.

On other words, she decided to stay up late and remain young at heart.

Which only further cements my senior citizenship. Because of my altered and offset sleep schedule, I am now alone just like most other old people and, to add insult to injury, when I’m trying to sleep, annoyed by all the racket made by everyone else, just like most other old people.

I cry and wail myself to sleep because of the loneliness, but everyone else in house is making too much god damned noise to hear it.

Bastards.

It’s just not fair. Though I really shouldn’t be surprised. My diabolically loud offspring are just barely into the double-digits when it comes to their years on this Earth, and the Missus, well, she is 2 years younger than me.

I just have to be patient (and not croak over the next 24 months) and then she’ll be old too and at last I will have my revenge (and some company in the early morning hours).

Unless I’m ancient by then. If that happens, who knows when my schedule will overlap with those of the living.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there are some neighborhood crows milling about on my lawn that need yelling at.

 

After A Certain Age It’s Hard To Do A Believable Pig Squeal

“Lie down on the table.”

I laid down on the cold, hard surface, conscious that I must look ridiculous in the wrap-around dress I had been forced to put on.

“On your stomach.”

I rolled onto my stomach, feeling a twinge of nervousness.

There was a moment of silence, then a leaden blanket was dropped on my torso and waist. “Now lift your legs up, bending at the knee.”

I dutifully complied, feeling awkward doing so. I also pulled the heavy blanket down a bit, to better shield my delicate reproductive organs.

“Now squeal like a pig!” the technician ordered, swatting me on the buttocks.

Now I really felt awkward.

OK, that last part didn’t happen, but it sure felt like it happened.

Well, the feeling really awkward happened, but not the smack or the squeal.

You see, I had to get x-rays of my knee to help the doctors figure out why it was hurting.

Which led to this moment where I was wearing a light blue hospital gown and lying on a glass table, convinced the male technician was about to smack my bum and order me to emit a porcine whinny.

I really, truly believed that indignity was coming.

I don’t know why – the technician was nothing but professional.

I’m guessing it was the silly gown, the nervousness surrounding the mystery of my unhealthy knee, and the convoluted pose.

Plus a far-too-vivid(-and-self-deprecating) imagination.

Instead, there was a faint buzz, a beep, and then:

“OK, you can get up now.”

I was mostly relieved, and only very slightly disappointed. I got up, did the fifteen foot walk of shame back to the changing closet (it was not big enough to be called a room), and then, head bowed, made my way back home to await the results of the x-ray and ponder what might have been, but wasn’t.

(The Missus is reading this over my shoulder, and after a sharp intake of breath, looked at me funny. She just mumbled something that sounded like ‘Sometimes I worry about you’, but when I asked her to repeat it, she walked away, shaking her head sadly.

Sometimes I worry about her.)

Anyway, this x-ray experience has made the whole ‘colonoscopy incident’ from a few years ago seem a lot less traumatic.

That’s a lie. The ‘colonoscopy incident’ was terribly traumatic and nothing will ever diminish that.

Ever.

I also now make a habit of reading over the procedures the doctor has ordered, to make sure there aren’t any more…regrettable mistakes.

In the end, the diagnosis was anti-climatic:

Turns out I have what is known in medical parlance as ‘old man knees’. So now I have a whole series of stretches and strengthening exercises to do that allow me to feel awkward and uncomfortable all by myself.

Except when the Missus is watching, with that familiar worried expression and the same question, every time:

“Are you sure the doctor wants you to do that?”

I always say yes, even though nowhere in the instructions does it say I should squeal.

 

I Don’t Want To Embrace My Inner Child – He’s A Total Prat (And Not In The Good, Sociopath Way)

I'm outraged! And I feel old! And I'm outraged I feel old!

Lately I’ve been feeling old.

It might be the grey hair. Or the onset of constant low-level joint pain. Or the fact that a pack of teenage girls recently rolled their eyes and laughed at me, saying, “Not a chance, grampa!”

For the record, I was not hitting on them. One was wearing an improbably short, impressively garish orange and purple plaid mini skirt, more lacy trim than skirt, to be strictly honest, and along with the mohawk and Wellingtons, how could I not stare?

But feeling old reminded me of that old saying about getting in touch with your inner child.

Lately I’ve also been feeling really angry.

It might be the yahoos on the freeway, cutting me off. Or the power walkers on residential sidewalks who won’t get out of my way (share the road, bitches!). Or that old lady ahead of me in the line at the bank, depositing a thousand dollars into her account, one penny at a time.

It makes me feel like a tea-pot that’s about to explode.

Seeing as how these two facts combine to make me an old, poorly engineered tea-pot that’s bubbling with rage, I started thinking about forms of release.

Instead of getting in touch with my inner child, I pondered getting in touch with my inner sociopath.

(It’s possible that The Dark Knight was on TV when I came up with this combination. It’s an awesome movie, and has probably inspired countless other brilliant ideas.)

What’s not to like about this idea? Let’s review:

Sociopaths know no fear.

Sociopaths don’t care about anyone or anything.

Sounds perfect! I don’t want to fear the consequences of my actions, and I certainly don’t want undue concern for my fellow humans to prevent me from running some a-holes off the road (or shoving them into a bank vault that’s on a timed lock right before it closes on a Friday afternoon). Let’s do it!

Come on? Who among you hasn’t wistfully thought about going on a rampage down the streets of a major city, controlling a crime syndicate while battling masked vigilantes?

Oh, but wait. I suppose getting in touch with your inner sociopath is like losing your virginity. Afterwards, everything changes, and you can’t go back, so you want to make sure you wait for the right moment, the right person, before you surrender to that dark, ever-hungry urge.

Because there’s no returning from this journey. Like sex, once you’ve tried sociopathy, you can’t stop. You just want more, more, more, and then you stumble across a saucy little number in a garish mini skirt and she calls you “grampa.”

But I digress.

So I’m not really sure what to do. I’ve tried researching embracing your inner sociopath, but not surprisingly, there are far fewer pithy articles in the mainstream media about doing it than there are about embracing your inner rug rat.

So for now, I bide my time, taking comfort in knowing that I’m not alone in the struggle with this question, that we all are wondering when we should cut loose and let our wild and crazy out.

Oh, it’s just me, you say?

Never mind.

—

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