 | |
| My right eyebrow's inspiration. |
I had an epiphany tonight. I am old.
“Pshaw!” you might say. “You are not old! You are only as old as you feel. Age is an attitude.” You would be right, and even after giving those facts extensive deliberation, I am still old. (As a side note, if you really said “Pshaw!” then you are probably old, too.)
In years I am only 38, but middle age has been creeping up on me slowly. First it was my meteorologist knee, the one that can predict a weather shift with more accuracy than NOAA. Quickly following suit was a hip and a wrist, with my back occasionally joining in on the fun. If a storm is brewing, I’m walking like the second guy from the left on the evolutionary chart.
The next sign was my lack of desire to go out. Most people my age are married or otherwise settled down and generally go out as a couple with other couples. Cougars are only cool if they are hot (oxymoron, anyone?) and in my current physical condition I’m less a cougar and more a domesticated housecat: fat, lazy, and more interested in napping than in playing. I am beginning to believe that I am the female version of Garfield. I hate Mondays, I love good lasagna, and my three most prominent personality traits are sarcasm, cynicism, and obnoxiousness. The entire world is better off if I stay at home.
Tangentially related to my need to stay at home is the intensely burning apathy I feel for my phone. In my younger years I loved talking on the phone, for hours on end. When I got my first internet-ready computer, way back when the 28.8 dial-up modem was top of the line, I had to get two phone lines because I couldn’t risk missing a call. Now I don’t even have a land line and my cell phone is merely a way to send text messages and connect to the internet if I am away from my computer. If my phone actually rings, my first reaction is to groan and roll my eyes. Sometimes I even yell at it. “What? What now? I don’t want to talk to you!” even before I know who is calling. It’s not that I dislike you or even that I have more important things to do; it’s that I simply don’t want to vocalize my thoughts. This is why texting and Facebook were created.
Of course the obvious physical effects of aging are beginning to show up. Failing eyesight, thinning hair, wrinkles, age spots, dry skin, you name it. I understand and accept these things with grace, or at least as much grace as a sarcastic, cynical, obnoxious middle-aged woman can muster. What I don’t accept is that whiskery-type hair that grows in the middle of my right eyebrow. What the hell IS that thing and how did it land in my eyebrow? Did it get lost on its way to Abe Vigoda’s face? Plucking it is an adventure that usually ends with a bald spot in the middle of my brow that is far more noticeable than the single wiry white hair was in the first place. It’s a no-win situation.
Despite all these signs, I still didn’t feel like I was old until tonight’s aforementioned epiphany. So how exactly did that realization come about? While waiting at a red light, I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed with the jackwad behind me playing his stereo at top volume. A few short years ago I would simply have turned my stereo up loud enough to prevent me from having to hear his boom badoom boom, boom badoom boom bass. While the Nicki Minaj reference may score me points in the “Young At Heart” category, what was actually playing on my moderately-volumed speakers wasn’t quite that hip. I was listening to ABBA.
Yep. I’m old.
Okay, so I may not qualify for the senior discount at IHOP just yet, but the way things are going I’m just a hop, skip and a jump away from yelling at you kids to get off my lawn. Or in my case, three short, hunched over shuffle steps away. We must be expecting rain.
Posts
