AGING: ANOTHER VIEW

In the past couple of years I have ranted, analyzed and whined about the aging process. In one instance I may have even bragged about my immunity to the creeping crud of codgerdom. I shouldn’t have bragged. It’s all well and good, I suppose, but there is, as always, more to be said on such a pervasive subject. And this time jealousy is the point of my musings.

I am jealous of people who don’t seem to age. And I’m also jealous of folks who age in little tiny, nearly imperceptible increments. Take my wife, please. (That line didn’t seem funny when Henny Youngman said it and it still is lame) My wife has a little gray hair. She has a few little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. But it took her almost sixty years to get those tiny signs of aging. I got wrinkles, sagging body parts, sagging face parts, age spots, weird bodily noises, almost completely gray hair, hair sprouting from ears and nose, wild and bushy eyebrows and bad skin in a matter of weeks after I turned fifty. In fact just the other day one of my grandsons said I smelled old. How that can be true when I shower daily and use all manner of lotions and ointments is beyond me. Maybe it’s the lotions and ointments.

Here’s my wife’s regimen for clear skin and a youthful appearance. Wash face, dry face. That's it. She doesn’t use Oil of Olay or any other skin cream. She never wears make-up. Now I will divulge that she gets a little color added to her hair a couple times a year. But even fifteen year old girls do that. So I’d have to say that she’s pretty low maintenance and a disappointment to cosmetic marketing people everywhere.

Last week I had the opportunity to be around a large number of relatives, mostly from my Dad’s side of the family. The men in this group tended to look pretty well worn. If they had hair it was well on the way to gray. They all seemed to suffer the same maladies that afflict me. But the women seem to have gone into their middle and late middle age with a lot fewer visible signs of the process. They are bright eyed and clear skinned. Even the ladies that wear make-up seem to do it in an ornamental way and not for camouflage. It makes me so jealous when I see these women, some who are quite a lot older than me, looking so darn good.

Well I guess there’s no point in this envious attitude. Aging is what it is and will affect all of us in the same way eventually. I’ve decided to take a proactive approach. I’m going to hang out more with men and women who look older than me. In fact I was just on-line checking out assisted living and nursing homes in the area. Did you know that they have statistics like the “average age of residents” listed on their sites. I’m looking for a place where that number is somewhere around “ninety”.

Have a fine day, ya’ll.