I walk to work almost every morning. It takes about half an hour, and I burn a few calories, and I get a chance to talk to myself while waving my arms and everything. All the people driving by think I'm a lunatic.
So I get to work the other morning - it was around twenty-eight degrees outside, by the way - and I am delicately trying to blow my nose. And one of the younger staff members in my office, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five years old, chirps at me, "Oh my goodness, are you sick?"
So I scowl at her and say, "No, my nose always runs like this after I've been in the cold for half an hour. It happens when you get older."
Do you remember when people used to say things like that to you?
(Well, maybe you're still young and are still accustomed to hearing it from cranky geezers like me. If so, mazel tov.)
It's fun to bark at young people. I like to watch them quiver.
But it's not altogether pleasant, this whole body-falling-apart thing.
Remember when you looked out the window at a fresh blanket of snow and thought, "Oh boy, no school"? Now Partner and I (combined ages 117) look out and see broken hips and emergency rooms and artificial knees and six weeks of physical therapy.
So we pace ourselves. We are seldom out past ten o'clock at night. We do not do grocery shopping and laundry on the same evening, because we might overtax ourselves. We generally allow ourselves a few extra minutes to get places and do things, because you never know when your shoulder is going to pop out of joint, or blood might start gushing out of your nose, or God knows what else might happen. Hell, if we move too fast, we might strain a giblet, or pop a kidney, or snap one of our chalky frail bones right in half.
It's a regular race to the old-folks home.
Last one there gets to push the wheelchair!
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