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November 28, 2003
The subtle, not so subtle signs of aging
"You know," I implored, "the album where they had to rip off the cover because of the nudity and they just sold it with a white cover?" It was at that moment I rediscovered that awful truth: I was dating myself. After all, the Beatles last album, "Let It Be" was released my senior year of high school in 1971. It's another of those signs, like looking in the mirror at all the gray hairs. Turning 51 this past week has been a slightly bitter pill. In fact, at my age I celebrate the day before my birthday, it's the last day I'll be that age before I get a year older. It's a far cry from the eight-millimeter films shown on that ancient Bell and Howell projector that show a smiling kid in a crew cut, blowing out candles on a birthday cake. For some reason the young servicemen in the newspaper photos and the high school students seem to look younger and younger every year. And judging by my memories I've gotten older and older. The new voters in 2004 won't have personally experienced the assassinations and the riots of the 1960s, reading the casualty tolls from the Vietnam War, hearing about the Watergate scandal, watching the hostage crisis unfold in Iran and the Iran-Contra scandal. There are numerous other signs to get hit by when it dawns on you that life is passing you by. Here are a few tidbits. • A walk into a liquor store is another sobering realization of your age. No liquor for you if you were born after this date in, what's that you say, 1982? • You start to comment about how some of the dancers that belong to the Nevada Silver Tappers do have some nice legs. One of them wants to line you up with a date - with her mother. • You start talking to a woman in a bar and soon realize you know both of her parents. • Horror of all horrors, you get just like the old timers you remember as a kid, talking about how bread was a nickel a loaf in the Depression. I remember when the most expensive item at the corner Dairy Queen was the 40-cent par fait sundae. • You catch yourself listening to KJUL one morning on the way into work. That's K-Jewel, the station that plays those old Frank Sinatra songs you only listened to as a young man if you went into a bar to try to pick up older women for a change. • You read about all these aging rock stars, like Ozzy Osbourne who cancelled a tour date because he slipped in the shower. Or Keith Richard of the Rolling Stones, who fell off his chair and broke his hip. Or a news report that Wavy Gravy turned 65, the hoarse hippie from a San Francisco soup kitchen who yelled out at Woodstock, "What we had in mind was breakfast in bed for 400,000!" • A woman you're slow dancing with asks what that clinking noise is in your pocket. "It's the prescription Viagra rolling around in the bottle," you reply. • After that third run down the ski slope your knees start to ache with arthritis. • A friend was talking about how they recently considered two candidates for a reporting job at his newspaper. The publisher elected to hire the younger one, even though the older candidate had good newspaper clippings. "He'd be too stuck in his ways," the publisher said of the older reporter candidate. Guess I'd better get out the Grecian Formula hair dye and get a Botox injection before I apply for a job. • You start noticing crow feet under your eyes after being out on the beach, instead of your suntan. • Instead of staying out late having a few more drinks, you look forward to having that first cup of hot coffee in the morning and enjoying the sunshine. • Some family members start to get afraid you're gay if you show up at the family reunion without a girlfriend. You wonder if you should hire a woman who gets paid by the hour to accompany you. • Movies you remember as first releases are now on the Turner Classic Movie channel. • You start to have those "senior moments" of forgetfulness. Just what was the name of that Elko city manager anyway? • You can remember when the Sunbelt cities weren't so built up, when South Mountain in Phoenix wasn't surrounded by subdivisions, for example. • It hasn't happened yet, but I'm waiting for the waitress to ask me if I have the senior citizen discount. I've already been told I'm old enough to join the Pahrump Senior Center. • You put a sticker on your desk that reads, "You're not getting older, you're getting better." Actually, Americans are probably too preoccupied with youth culture. Aging can be enjoyable. At least the law enforcement authorities don't treat you with as much suspicion as some did when you were a punk kid, many people treat you with a little more respect. But it's still a little unnerving to hear a girl at the bank call you sir. While my 51st birthday wasn't much cause to celebrate, I treated myself to a week in Rio de Janeiro for my 50th. While sitting in a sidewalk café on Copacabana Beach, a Brazilian woman who spoke some English said I wasn't getting old; I was a mature man. Then of course she obviously wanted to be polite to a wealthier American man. I like those words though, a mature man. It makes me sound like I've aged like a fine wine, like Sinatra sang, not as my older sister would spell out, "getting o-l-d." But then reality will hit me again. I expect next time, a younger woman will ask, "What is an album?" I'll explain with patience forged by wisdom: "Well, you see that came before the eight-track tape, which came before the cassette tape, which came before the compact disc." Write to Mark Waite at mwaite@pvtimes.com. |
