Memoirs of a Geezer!
Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth
to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!
This Episode: A New Wave of Conversation -- Or, Talking Points in the Geezer Age!
Compare it to a fogged glass of memory -- like squinting through a scrim in a stage play -- I try to summon scenes of life from the bloom of youth -- back about two score and 5 or 10 years ago. It's not easy trying to recall distant conversations, gathered round dining or drinking tables, discussions that so enthralled us. What topics commanded our attention, those that initiated overlapping, rapid-fire dialogue? And how do today's conversations with peers compare? Back then, I know we talked about friends, sports, parties, games, jobs, school, major courses of study, even career ideas, military service experiences, politics, travel, money or the lack of it, and, yes, if less enthusiastically, the future, our future...
If we discussed anything having to do with the state of our health, it usually had to do with injuries incurred during sporting events -- a broken tibia suffered on the ski slopes, a rib cracked playing football or rugby, a "blown ACL" during soccer or rounding second base, a toe smashed by some behemoth lunatic galoot who landed on it in a volleyball match.
And now?...
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| The Photo above has little or nothing to do with this post. I try to emulate Popeye, as I appear to be striking an heroic pose aboard a stranded tug boat on Duluth's Lake Superior shoreline. The photo does, however, illustrate a descent into profound foolishness that can often accompany geezer-hood! |
And now?...
"Hello! Is this Mrs. Geezie at the insurance place?... Does my supplemental insurance cover a chiropractor?... Uh huh... Yes... How about cosmetic surgery, like a jowl tuck...? OK, yes... I see. Does Medicare cover the entire cost of a hip replacement?... An ankle rebuild? What? Can you speak louder?..."
On a recent evening, my wife and I are having dinner with friends. We'd been to an art museum. (Doesn't seem that long ago the extent of our cultural enterprise would have been weaving from one saloon to another saloon!) We stopped for dinner at a fine new restaurant. Almost trendy. I ordered a diet brown pop with a slice of lime. (It's my current beverage of choice. I get artificially inebriated lately drinking too much non-alcoholic wine-like stuff!)
I begin a conversation. Our companions are "Yo" and "Glo": "So, how are we doing? How's your pain level. I understand you've been having some trouble in the lower extremities?"
"Yeah, thanks for asking," says Yo. "It's my shin bones. I think I have splints, you know, from fast walking on cement or something."
"What are you doing for it," I ask.
"Ach... what can one do? I mean, the doctor says 'stay off your legs... Rest, sit down, elevate your feet... ice your shins 20, 30 minutes, two, three times a day... And orthotics. Do you have orthotics in your shoes?...' Ah, for pity f-ing sake, I'm walking! Not running 30 miles through Death Valley!!"
"Yeah! I know what you mean. I get freezing toes on my right foot when I walk in winter. I bought a mitten for my toes, but I can't find the damned thing. My toes are always freezing. Never used to freeze! Think it's a kind of rheumatism?"
"Knees!" Yo announces truculently, like a biblical revelation. "I got rattling dice in both my knees. And my shoulder! Geezus! I lift a beer bottle and my shoulder erupts in a chorus of crunchy munchies and cracking twigs!"
"Please," I say. "Don't ask me about knees. I'm walking up steps in Milwaukee; they can hear me in Cincinnati!"
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| "Listen, my dear. I going to dash out of here in a moment so that we can 'beat the check.' You wait a minute or two, then you race out...!" "Race!!?? Are you nuts!!? I can barely rise!" |
"Please," I say. "Don't ask me about knees. I'm walking up steps in Milwaukee; they can hear me in Cincinnati!"
Glo addresses my wife. "I think I have a kind of arthritis in my hands. Really painful, especially when I mop."
"Tell me about it," says my wife. "When I vacuum, my back is pure agony. And mopping too. It's that awkward body motion one has to use. It's a misery! I could be laid up an entire week!"
"Listen," I say to Yo, "What kind of pain medications do you take? Ibuprofen, maybe? Aspirin with codeine? Smoke a joint?"
Glo jumps in, "I sometimes take a muscle relaxer, but they make me exhausted. I'm destroyed for a whole day afterwards."
"Ohmygod," my wife responds. "Same with me! I'm a sleep-walking zombie for 24 hours."
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| A portrait of the artist as a young geezer! |
As a young man, I worked in a liquor store run by a family of characters one couldn't possibly invent. Rose, the elderly sister of the principal owner, shambled constantly back and forth through the aisles, arms folded, haunting the store like an anguished ghoul, announcing every 10 minutes or so, "Oh dear god, how I suffer, how I suffer!" To which her brother, after every groan and lamentation, responded, "Rose, for god's sake, don't start with me!" Or... "Rose, shut the hell up, I'm beggink you...?!" Sometimes... "Rose, please, I'm trying to think... I have a customer here... We're discussing!"
At the time, I thought, "If I ever degenerate into caricatures like these babbling lunatics, please, someone shoot me!" But now -- and I'm still wondering when did this happen, for pity f-ing sake -- I'm there. I'm "Rose" the roaming zombie ghoul, uttering ejaculations of pain as a knee collapses or a hip sends a bullet of agony into my tortured brain.
Back at the restaurant... Yo asks, "Who's that old actor who said, 'getting old aint for sissies,' Bitzy or Netty something?"
"Yeah," I say. "I think I remember. It's almost funny, if sadly true. Is she still with us; was this a recent observation?"
"Nah," says Yo. "She's dead. Couldn't be recent, unless she's been exhumed to make public service announcements for the elderly." We chuckle.
Sometimes I listen to my children and their friends as they chatter happily, noisily about subjects that probably consumed our own range of interests when my peers and I were young. But, I wouldn't want to go backward; I'm perfectly happy to be firmly ensconced in "robust middle age"... better known in some circles as "GeezerHood" or "senior status." I mean, I get nice discounts, lots of them. And after we play volleyball on Monday nights, I go sit down and change my shoes, while the youngsters take down and put away the nets.
Conversations may have taken a turn toward pills and the grave these days, but I wouldn't trade places with anyone who still gets pimples and embarrassment anxiety. Good friends of our common generational status share values and history, and we can talk about things that would only bewilder, or bore, those begat a generation or two later than our own. And besides, "geezer chatter" creates a world of amusement for our children and their children, if they happen to be listening. It'd be remiss of us to deprive them of such a vast reservoir of potential ridicule, not to mention riotous mirth!
I hasten to apologize to those more advanced in years than I if I seem to be usurping their prerogatives of bruising misery and body pain complaints. I merely wanted to effect a start, in case I can't somehow articulate a proper amount of verbal or written aging agony a decade or two hence!! Thank you! I have to go lie down now...
Back at the restaurant... Yo asks, "Who's that old actor who said, 'getting old aint for sissies,' Bitzy or Netty something?"
"Yeah," I say. "I think I remember. It's almost funny, if sadly true. Is she still with us; was this a recent observation?"
"Nah," says Yo. "She's dead. Couldn't be recent, unless she's been exhumed to make public service announcements for the elderly." We chuckle.
Sometimes I listen to my children and their friends as they chatter happily, noisily about subjects that probably consumed our own range of interests when my peers and I were young. But, I wouldn't want to go backward; I'm perfectly happy to be firmly ensconced in "robust middle age"... better known in some circles as "GeezerHood" or "senior status." I mean, I get nice discounts, lots of them. And after we play volleyball on Monday nights, I go sit down and change my shoes, while the youngsters take down and put away the nets.
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| Sometimes, older persons engage in Fine Whining while dining! As an old friend once remarked, "I'm only happy when I'm miserable... or drinking!" |
Conversations may have taken a turn toward pills and the grave these days, but I wouldn't trade places with anyone who still gets pimples and embarrassment anxiety. Good friends of our common generational status share values and history, and we can talk about things that would only bewilder, or bore, those begat a generation or two later than our own. And besides, "geezer chatter" creates a world of amusement for our children and their children, if they happen to be listening. It'd be remiss of us to deprive them of such a vast reservoir of potential ridicule, not to mention riotous mirth!
I hasten to apologize to those more advanced in years than I if I seem to be usurping their prerogatives of bruising misery and body pain complaints. I merely wanted to effect a start, in case I can't somehow articulate a proper amount of verbal or written aging agony a decade or two hence!! Thank you! I have to go lie down now...
(Special Note of Attribution and Gratitude: The perpetrator of this Blog extends enormous thanks to his great friends, Rob and Sue, and to SweetHeart too! Thank you for the fine suggestions, for the germs of ideas that led to this post and for your good company, or please accept my apologies, as the case may be! My love and profound thanks for your patience, understanding and generosity of spirit!)
Humbly Submitted 12-02-14 -- Joel K.
