I don’t know why this is still considered a milestone, I won’t be retiring anytime soon, I can’t afford to. I have already predicted my demise, I will go facedown on my desk after choking on a rice krispie treat that I keep in my desk for “emergencies”. I never thought I would make it to twenty let alone sixty. I abused my body with tobacco, alcohol, drugs and cheeseburgers for much of my youth. Now I am paying the price, as I age my body has decided to exact sweet revenge on the guy that treated it so badly for so many years.
My prostate is now apparently the size of a Florida grapefruit. I have to pee twice as often and it takes twice as long. If I decide to really live it up and have that second club soda when I’m out at dinner I will pay the price with multiple trips to the bathroom overnight while I’m “sleeping”.
On the subject of sleep, I can fall into a deep slumber five minutes into the pay per view movie I have shelled out six bucks for. On the other hand once I get into bed my brain switches to driving in a blinding snowstorm mode. Once I do fall asleep I will be up in a few hours to pee and then spend the next hour or so wondering where I put that bag of chips I was going to have for lunch three days ago.
I have a bunch of kids so I do have proof that I once had a sex life. For many years my little brain ruled the roost and the big brain was there just to ask me what the hell I was thinking after I rolled off the lady I met at the bar. Where was the big brain when the little brain was saying, “Hey, look at that hot babe at the end of the bar!” Big brain might say, “She’s talking to the jar of olives, what are you thinking?” Little brain would retort, “Who cares? Look at that tush!” Big brain would agree and then a few days later the aforementioned olive talker was living in my apartment and writing poetry on the living room wall with lipstick. Big brain would then mock me relentlessly including decades later while I lay awake at 4:00 after getting up to pee.
I used to have a cast iron stomach. If there had been Tabasco toothpaste I would have used it. I could eat three hotdogs after a night out at the strip club and go home and sleep like a baby. After a rough night I’d stop at the bar on my way to work and have a shot or two of Tequila to cut the trail and be right back at it after working a double. Now if I slip up and eat some raw onion I have a lava pit in my gut and even a handful of Tums won’t tamp it down.
I have not had a pain free day in years. Both knees are shot, my left shoulder aches, my neck is stiff and I itch. Not that little occasional itch you give a light scratch to and forget but a hair shirt type itch that starts on the first cool day of the year and lasts well into Spring. I get red patches on my legs, arms, belly and one place on my back that is just out of reach. I stole my youngest son’s souvenir back scratcher from Maine and he ain’t getting it back, I don’t care if it does have a cool lighthouse on it.
I was never one of those people whose musical tastes ended with my senior year in high school. I loved almost every kind of music from the time I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. From Dylan to The Dandy Warhols, Country, Blues and Baroque, it was all in my record collection. Lately though when I buy a song on iTunes it more likely to be fifty years old rather than the latest hit. The hip hop my son listens to has me shaking my head.
My politics though have if anything come full circle. The radical beliefs of my youth had mellowed to the point that I actually considered supporting John McCain in 2000, George Bush took care of that though. By the time he had taken the oath of office I had dusted off my copy of Quotations From Chairman Mao and was dragging my young kids to antiwar marches in DC. In 2004 a guy mistook my old Washington Senators cap with the block red W for that W, “Oh are you a Bush guy?” I stopped getting my hair cut and have worn it long ever since. Letting my freak flag fly.
I love technology but I am hopeless with it. My computer is mainly used as a spare TV. When someone tries to explain to me how to set up and use a new program they may as well be speaking ancient Babylonian. “No it’s simple, you just blah blah blah gupgupgup, see? It’s easy!” On the plus side I can drive a stick shift.
My hearing is shot. I went to a concert in 1973, it was the loudest show I have ever attended before or since. When I left the theater my ears were ringing and they’ve never stopped, it just gets louder and louder. I started using closed captioning on my TV a few years ago. If I’m in a restaurant that’s loud I might just as well stare at my smart phone and play solitaire because I’m not going to hear a word that the person sitting next to me is saying. I was told a few years back by a doctor that I’d probably be stone deaf by the time I’m seventy but I’m not worried about it, I’ll never make it to seventy, right?
