Studying calculus at an advanced age

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A friend of mine on Facebook mentioned Coursera recently. I respect his opinions, so I went to check it out.

It's for real. It’s a website where you can find college-level courses offered for free. Really.

Okay. So I never took calculus in high school or college, and I saw that that Coursera was offering “Calculus 101.”

What could it hurt? It’s an online course. It must be very gentle, right?

Brother, was I wrong.

This is a complete thorough-going college-level course in calculus, with lectures, and homework, and quizzes, and a textbook (all free).

I’m barely through with the first week, and I’m already terrified.

I haven’t felt this way since high school.

Calculus turns out to be demanding and difficult, which is not good for my ossifying over-fifty brain.

Every evening I resolve to quit the course, and every evening I try again.

Now: can someone tell me: how do you multiply square roots? I’ve forgotten.

And I need to know by next Friday’s quiz.

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My memorandum book

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I’ve tried all kinds of memory aides. But now I’m just writing things down.

I have a nice little memorandum book in my pocket, in which I write everything down: things I have to do at work, random thoughts, ideas for a blog, things to send to people, Christmas gifts.

I used to rely on my memory. Such a nice big powerful six-cylinder memory it was!

But now it’s gone. Between age and alcohol and blows to the head, it’s gone.

So I’ve come to rely on surrogates, like my little memorandum book.

My little memorandum book is great, so long as I remember to carry it with me. And a pen. (I still have to remind myself to keep those two things with me.)

The system’s not perfect yet, but it’s working. I’m remembering things.

But I ask myself: what happens on the days when I forget my memorandum book?

Apocalypse. Disaster. The universe itself may cease to exist.

Pray for me, children.

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The pleasures of the elderly

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“Did you see ‘Scaramouche’ on Turner Classic the other night?” I asked Apollonia the other day.

“What? Yeah, I think I switched past it,” she said. “Who was that? Rory Calhoun?”

“Nah,” I said. “Stewart Granger.”

We both laughed. “Same thing,” she said.

“I’ll say,” I said. “I think they were the same person. Maybe he was Rory Calhoun on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, and Stewart Granger on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”

Now we were both laughing like idiots.

Off in the corner there was a table of younger staff members, listening to us. They stared at us as if we were patients in an asylum. We were aware of them. But we kept laughing. No, more than that: we laughed even harder because they were staring at us.

Questions:

·        Does any of the above make any sense to you?

·        Do you know who Rory Calhoun was, or Stewart Granger?

·        Does “Turner Classic” mean anything to you?

It’s a habit of the elderly to mumble and cackle over the past. But this is a game we elderly people like to play: making reference to things that happened long before the other people in the room were born. It’s a way of getting even with those young people, with their music and their slang and their television programs that we’ve never heard of, and their texting jargon that we still haven’t quite figured out.

This is one of the great pleasures of the elderly: to make younger people uncomfortable.

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The face of winter

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Springtime is back in Providence, and – I don’t know – it never cheers me up. When spring comes, I almost always feel tired and lethargic. There’s a feeling of: Here we go again. And a feeling of: How many times do we have to do this?

Anyway, I have been a little fatigued lately, and it has affected my usual good looks. I took a glance into the mirror at the office the other day, and I gasped: I looked awful. My graying hair was standing up in all directions, and my complexion was pale, and I was hunched over like an invalid. My god, I thought. I’m Old Man Winter.

It’s awful, because I know inside that my spirit is still young. And then I look into the mirror and see a crouching horrible gargoyle looking back at me.

I just passed the age of fifty-five last year, and it made me thoughtful. Partner and I still have a few years together, I hope, before my bones begin to crumble into sawdust, or before the next asteroid hits.

We will stumble on together for a while, at least, in happiness. Every day together is a blessing.

I only hope Partner can endure seeing the face of Old Man Winter first thing every morning for a few years more.

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The aging brain

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I used to love my brain. It was very dependable. It had tremendous capacity, and a very quick response time.

 

 

But all that has changed.

 

 

I began to notice it about two years ago, at the advanced age of fifty-three. Proper names were suddenly less easy to remember. Simple facts – Who starred in which movie? What do you call that thing you use to eat ice cream with? – were eluding me.

 

 

The pace of the decline has quickened. I was introducing two people to one another not long ago – people I knew very well – and I suddenly couldn’t remember one of their names. I tried to cover for myself, fumblingly. I admitted it to one friend later, and he just grinned. “I noticed,” he said. “You forgot my name!”

 

 

Thank god he thought it was funny.

 

 

I told my doctor about it, sure that he would say it was more-or-less-early-onset Alzheimer’s. He shrugged. “It’s the aging brain,” he said.

 

 

The aging brain.

 

 

Lovely.

 

 

It progresses. The other day, I looked at a regular analog clock with hour hand on two and minute hand on six. One voice in my head said: “Two-thirty.” And another voice, achier and feebler, said: “What in the hell is that thing?”

 

 

Time ticks by, and I get dimmer and dimmer, and more and more feeble.

 

 

It’s only a matter of time.

 

 

What were we talking about?

---

 

Getting old: a very brief anecdote

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I overheard this conversation in a restaurant a while back. It is very brief, and pretty much perfect the way it is.

 

 

I was finishing my mixed-green salad with balsamic dressing when I overheard the waiter speaking to some older people at the next table. “I don’t need to write the orders down,” he said. “They just sort of soak into my head. I go over to the register, and they all come back to me like magic.”

 

 

“Good for you,” one of the women said. “Wait until you get older. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen and can’t remember what I wanted to do.”

 

 

“Big deal!” the man next to her said. “Sometimes I walk into the bathroom and can’t remember what I wanted to do.”

 

 

Ba-da-bump.

---

 

Retirement

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A few months ago, I ran into my old friend Violet. Violet retired from the University only a few years ago, after working there for over thirty years. She was one of those people who knew everyone, and knew how to do everything. She was smart, and quiet, and calm, and always seemed to be completely unfazed by everything.

 

 

 

So, after we exchanged a few pleasantries, she asked me: “What are you doing now?”

 

 

And I said: “I’m you.”

 

 

And we both laughed.

 

 

But it’s true. I’ve been there for over twenty-five years. I know everyone, and I know how to do everything. And, if I don’t, I know who to call. And I know their phone numbers by heart.

 

 

I have a funny little gadget on my office wall, which was given to me by a pension firm. It’s headed YEARS TO RETIREMENT, and it’s a big stupid dial, which you can turn from 2015 to 2040.

 

 

Naturally I have it set on 2040. I point it out to people from time to time, just for laughs.

 

 

Do you remember the Harry Potter character, the professor who’s actually a ghost? He was a regular professor once, but he died while teaching, and his ghost just kept teaching. So he’s still there.

 

 

I have a tiny fear that this is exactly what might happen to me.

 

 

When Violet first told me about her decision to retire, a few years ago, here’s what she said: “One day last week, I got up at 5:00 am because I wanted to work in the garden. And I was out there on my hands and knees, and I watched the sun come up, and I thought: I’d better start getting ready for work. And then I thought: I don’t have to do that if I don’t want to. And I made up my mind right there and then.”

 

 

Maybe someday, like Violet, I will pack it in, and turn in all the necessary paperwork, and go do some serious gardening and reading and writing.

 

 

But not just yet.

---

 

 

Human frailty

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I have my kidney stones, and my ischemia. I told you about my tennis elbow.

 

 

What else can go wrong?

 

 

We came back from France a few months ago, which means hoisting things in and out of overhead compartments on airplanes. Then, a few days after arrival, I went to the Providence Public Library without my sweet-little-old-lady library bag and came out with four heavy books and two “I LOVE MY LIBRARY” t-shirts. I walked for at least twenty minutes balancing thirty pounds of cargo – oh, that’s right, I stopped at CVS to buy some candy.

 

 

Two days later, my right shoulder began to ache.

 

 

Two days after that, I couldn’t raise my arm. I couldn’t put on a shirt without screaming with pain. I couldn’t lift a box of Junior Mints from the table.

 

 

I reconciled myself to this, though the blinding pain. I assured myself that I could make it through life somehow with one arm.

 

 

Then, after consulting WebMD and applying a heating pad and doing some physical-therapy exercises I learned from Partner, most of the pain went away.

 

 

It still twangs once in a while, and reminds me that it’s there. Naturally the words “rotator cuff” peal in my head.

 

 

And I remember what I heard a health professional say once: “Once you begin going downhill, you might slow down a bit here and there, or delay, but you never really stop going downhill.”

 

 

How cheerful!

 

 

Here’s a toast: to going downhill.

 

 

I hope the scenery is nice along the way.

---

 

 

The piano music of Frederic Chopin

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My routine over the past year or so has been to spend my last few hours before bedtime writing this dreadful blog.

 

 

I need background music to do this. Fortunately, I have a huge CD collection.  Since Partner’s in the next room watching “The Good Wife,” however, noisy orchestral music, and opera, and organ music seems inappropriate.

 

 

So I listen mostly to chamber music, and solo keyboard music.

 

 

I’ve gone through the Beethoven sonatas, and the Bach suites, and the Beethoven quartets, and the Mozart sonatas and quartets (and quintets).  I tried the Scarlatti sonatas (I own about two-thirds of them – you know I’m a maniac for complete sets of things), but it was like listening to the same thing over and over again.  I got out my set of the complete piano music of Federico Mompou and listened through that.  And the sonatas of Prokofiev, and Scriabin, and Shostakovich.

 

 

Finally, feeling bored and disdainful, I pulled out some ancient ultra-cheapo recordings of “The Favorite Music of Frederic Chopin," which I seem to recall buying for a dollar per CD.

 

 

After a few days of that, I went on eBay and bought a thirteen-CD set of the complete Chopin piano music for sixty bucks (which is a pretty good price, if you ask me).

 

 

Chopin I used to associate with everything that people hate about classical piano music: frilly, arch, virtuosic, all style and no substance, ornate frippery.

 

 

Oh how wrong I was.

 

 

This is music written in the first half of the nineteenth century – Beethoven and Schubert were only recently deceased, and Verdi and Wagner were just getting started - and it’s still incredibly fresh and energetic and daring. It changes key all over the place. The virtuosity is never just for show; it’s part of the structure of the piece.  The individual pieces are short; even the sonatas feel like suites.  The melodies are soulful and beautifully constructed. 

 

 

And the harmonies! They are amazing. Chopin tells stories with chord progressions. There's often solmething wild going on over the surface - some fancy figuration - but the progressions beneath them are telling the real story. Here, as an unvarnished example, is the C Minor Prelude (you may recognize it as a Barry Manilow song:)

 

 

20_24のプレリュード_作品28_第20番_ハ短調.mp3 Listen on Posterous

 

 

 

I’ve got the Polonaises going in the background as I write this.  I’ve worked my way through the Etudes, and the Preludes, and the Mazurkas, and the Sonatas, and the Scherzos.  (I still have the Waltzes to listen through, but I pretty much know those.) The performer is a Russian named Nikita Magaloff, whose claim to fame is that he did the complete Chopin piano music over and over again. He is precise, and unfrilly, and really very good.

 

 

When I was a kid, I didn’t like vegetables.  Now I love them.

 

 

Ditto Chopin.

 

 

How our tastes change as we get older!

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Scaling back

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I joined the local health club in 2008, when it first opened. I had never belonged to a health club before. I discovered quickly that I enjoyed it; I liked the feeling of trying to be healthy, and I liked watching cute guys work out in front of the big mirror on the fitness floor.

 

 

Now, almost four years later, at $55/month, I’m still there.

 

 

I know that’s expensive. But it keeps me anchored there: if I were paying less (WorkOut World charges $10/month!), I wouldn’t go very often, and wouldn’t be very motivated. At a much higher price, I am only too anxious to make good use of my purchase.

 

 

I experimented with everything in the place, at first. I tried the circuit machines, but they were too heavy for me (even at very light poundages), and I felt like a wimp. I tried freeweights: same thing. I took some sessions with a trainer, but he was silly and vain and spent most of our time together talking about how wonderful he was.

 

 

After a year or so, after much experimentation, I started doing just the treadmill: half an hour, at 4.7 miles per hour, at a 15% elevation. If I set the treadmill for my weight (around 160 pounds) and age (around 55 years old), it comes out to around 500 calories, which is perfect for me.

 

 

For three years I’ve kept this up. For the past year or two, I’ve done it maybe five or six times a week.

 

 

But lately – with the kidney stones, and my advancing age – I found it a little laborious.

 

 

So, a few weeks ago, I experimented with the settings. I find that I can still burn 500 calories at 4.0 miles per hour, at an elevation of 15%, in approximately 32.5 minutes.

 

 

I don’t sweat as much. My heart rate, which used to go up to 140 or 150, now stays at a more age-appropriate 130. I’m only slightly more bored, because I’m on the machine slightly longer. (I’m usually there in the evening, during “Jeopardy!” / “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” so I manage to keep myself amused.)

 

 

But I am slowing down. Noticeably.

 

 

Back when I started in 2008/9, I was proud of the fact that I could get my heart rate up to a dangerous 155/minute.

 

 

I am not so much proud of this anymore. I think getting my heart rate up to 130 or so is quite sufficient.

 

 

(Oh I am getting old.)

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Working nine to five

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I like my student employees. They are very dedicated and hard-working and willing to prove themselves, and funny.

 

 

My current assistant, Jake, is very good at his job. He’s smart, and diligent. But he hasn’t really worked a job – a full-day, nine-to-five job – before.

 

 

On top of that, he’s working extra hours in the evening, at another campus job this summer. Also he recently let me know that he’s working some extra hours on weekends. (That's harder than I've ever worked in my life. I salute him.)

 

 

He said this to me last week (I paraphrase, lightly):

 

 

“This is weird. I come in here at eight-thirty, and it’s mostly sitting down all day, and I answer the phone a couple of times, and I go to lunch. And I work on stuff of my own, you know. And then it’s afternoon, and the day goes pretty quickly, and it’s five o’clock.  And I go home. And I know I’ve been sitting down all day. But I’m exhausted.”

 

 

All of you out there: do you understand Jake’s situation? I do. I was there thirty years ago, when I entered the workforce. I’m still there, really.

 

 

I mostly sit down during the day (though I buzz around the building a lot). I go home, and I make dinner, or Partner and I make dinner together.

 

 

And I’m exhausted.

 

 

What is it? Is it ego depletion? That’s supposed to be cured by ingestion of glucose / sucrose, and I’m sucking on Starlight Mints all day long, so that can’t be it.

 

 

It’s psychological. Hell, it’s generational. I’ve been working for the same employer for almost twenty-five years. Jake was born after I started working there!

 

 

Every few years I get this impulse to rebel and do something else. And then I settle down and fall back into my (admittedly very comfortable and reasonably well-compensated) rut.

 

 

Ah well.

 

 

Nine to five isn’t so bad after all, is it?

 

 

(Sigh.)

---

 

 

Running to school

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Back to school, kids!

 

 

My walk to work takes me past the University’s day-care center, around the time when parents are dropping their children off in the morning: lots of noisy kids, parents driving, parents walking. I like the walking parents and children best; they’re almost always holding hands, which is very sweet.

 

 

A few years ago, I saw a father and daughter walking hand in hand toward the center, when all at once the little girl saw someone she knew – some friends, maybe – and let go of her father’s hand, and started running toward the school, excited to join the fun.

 

 

How long has it been since you were excited enough about something to run toward it?

 

 

Ah well, ho hum. It’s part of the magic of childhood.

 

 

We outgrow it.

 

 

(Sadly enough.)

---

 

 

Senior discount

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The other evening, after one of my old-ladyish treadmill workouts at the Boston Sports Club, I went over to the Eastside Marketplace next door to buy  a rotisserie chicken and a couple of tomatoes. I was still glowing with perspiration from my quasi-workout, and I thought I looked terribly buff and macho.

 

 

Imagine my surprise when the checkout girl gave me the senior discount without even asking me for my ID!

 

 

This was one of those landmark occasions. Remember the first time you didn’t get carded in a bar? Remember your 21^st birthday, or your 30^th, or your 40^th? This was kind of like that, but slightly more funereal.

 

 

Evidently I look old. I employ a lot of college students, and I have come to accept that I am usually older than their parents. (I have also come to accept that I have been working at the university longer than my student employees have been alive. I get a kind of perverse kick out of it, and I think so do they.)

 

 

But “senior discount.” Just think about that.

 

 

And the cashier didn’t even ask me

 

 

To be fair: it was Tuesday, which is “senior discount night” at Eastside Marketplace. The old trout behind me in line had to be at least a hundred and fifty years old. The checker (who looked maybe twenty) made the simple assumption that we were both there to take advantage of the “senior discount.”

 

 

And who doesn’t love a discount?

 

 

So, on the upside: I saved fifty cents on my rotisserie chicken and hothouse tomatoes.

 

 

On the other hand: people look at me and think “He’s old.”

 

 

Oh dear dear dear.

---

 

 

No one thinks old people are funny

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Apollonia and I were laughing ourselves sick the other day, trying to remember that stupid song that Strawberry Alarm Clock sang back in the 1960s.  “O god,” she croaked.  “I just thought of another one.  Remember Question Mark and the Mysterians?”

 

 

“O god,” I groaned.  “What did they sing?”

 

 

She Googled it quick as a flash. “’96 Tears,’” she said, and we began hooting with laughter again.  I started to sing: “’I’m gonna cry, cry-cry-cry – “

 

 

Suddenly Apollonia stopped laughing and became almost solemn.  “Have you noticed,” she said, "that we just kill one another?”

 

 

“No kidding,” I said, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. “We’re both hysterical.”

 

 

“And have you noticed,” she said, “that no one else laughs when we tell our little amusing stories?  Everyone gets very quiet.  They wait for us to calm down.”

 

 

“So they don’t get the jokes,” I said. “To hell with them.”  (Actually I didn’t say “To hell with them.”  I was far ruder, if you see what I mean.)

 

 

She smiled.  “Yeah,” she said.  “To hell with them.”  (She also used the ruder expression.)

 

 

It’s a privilege you gain as you get older: the right to laugh yourself silly over stupid things that kids just don’t understand.  They just haven’t lived long enough.

 

 

They’ll figure it out, if they live long enough.

 

 

In the meantime: to hell with them!

---

 

 

Tennis elbow

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Hey, kids! I just self-diagnosed myself into another interesting condition!

 

 

About two months ago, my right elbow began to bother me. It hurt when I picked anything up with my right hand, even small light things. It felt better some days, but then it got worse again. Sometimes it felt like it was burning. (Actually, I think I whammed it into a wall or cabinet around that time. I am extraordinarily uncoordinated.)

 

 

One day, on a whim, I asked my student assistant Jake: “What does tennis elbow feel like?”

 

 

He raced onto the Net and read the info to me, and showed me a diagram of the bones and tendons involved.

 

 

Bingo!

 

 

It’s not a big deal. It only hurts once in a while, when I pick something up the wrong way. It’s not a crippling pain; it’s a once-in-a-while ache. It has lots of other names: its medical name is “lateral epicondylitis,” but we can call it “shooter’s elbow,” or “archer’s elbow,” if we are feeling twee.

 

 

My friend Matt, the big tough parking cop, tells me that I can buy a brace that will help. I read on WebMD that I’m supposed to rest it, and ice it. My skinny little doctor giggled when I described it, and when I touched my elbow to show him where the pain was, he said: “That’s exactly where tennis elbow pain is.”

 

 

I can deal with it. I have gigantic bottles of ibuprofen at home and at the office, and I eat them like M&Ms if/when necessary.

 

 

It’s just one more thing in my life, you know? One more small breakdown, one more ache, one more flower in my garden.

 

 

From “The Simpsons”:

 

 

Doctor: Mr. Burns, I'm afraid you are the sickest man in the United States. You have everything. 

Burns: You mean I have pneumonia?

Doctor: Yes.

Burns: Juvenile diabetes?

 Doctor: Yes.

 Burns: Hysterical pregnancy?

 Doctor: Uh, a little bit, yes. You also have several diseases that have just been discovered – in you.

 Burns: I see. You sure you haven't just made thousands of mistakes?

 Doctor: Uh, no, no, I'm afraid not.

 Burns: This sounds like bad news.

 Doctor:Well, you'd think so, but all of your diseases are in perfect balance.

 Burns: So what you're saying is, I'm indestructible.

 Doctor: Oh, no, no, in fact, even a slight breeze could . . .

 Burns: Indestructible. 

 

Over and out, kids.

---

 

New glasses

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A couple of weeks ago, I took off my glasses at work to make a dramatic gesture, and the temple snapped off in my hand. This is the second time these particular frames have broken in just a few months, so I bounced right off to my funny little optician to get them fixed.


He is a silly little bunny. His prices are good, but he is not much of a businessman. Also, intellectually, he does not seem to be the most fully-inflated beach ball at the pool party. “They’ll be ready by Wednesday” usually means “Check back on Friday.” He gets dithery and confused easily. Every time I go to him, I swear I’ll never go to him again. Then he posts a new price list, and I think: Wow! That’s cheap! And I go back to him.


Anyway: “No problem,” he said. “I’ll order new frames for you.”  (This was on a Saturday.) “Check back on Wednesday.” (Translation: “Stop by next Saturday.”)


During the week, I made do with old pairs of glasses. My prescription changes dramatically from year to year; evidently my eyeballs mutate at random. Some of my old glasses are good for distance vision, some for close-up. I found I was reading the newspaper by taking off my (old) glasses altogether and holding it up to my eyeball, like a jeweler examining a precious stone.


Another week passed. I went to see Funny Optician. He spun in circles, excusing himself for not having fixed my glasses yet. It was the manufacturer’s fault; they hadn’t sent the replacement frames. He didn’t know what the problem was. (Did I mention that he has a high whiny voice with a really seriously advanced Rhode Island accent?) Come back Monday, maybe Tuesday.


I checked in on Monday. I found a sign that said CLOSED MONDAY.


Now I was ready to kill him.


I took the day off on Wednesday and went to see him again, carrying a polo mallet. Again he spun in circles. Then, suddenly, he circled back. “Hey!” he wheezed. “What about plastic?”


“What?” I said.


“Instead of metal frames,” he said. “Maybe they’d wear better for you. I could do those right now. These are tortoise. You don’t want tortoise. Are these brown or black? Can you tell? I got black here somewhere. Wait a minute –“


As he was jabbering, I thought: I need something new. I just turned fifty-five. I’ve been wearing metal frames for decades now. Maybe a little hipster action will be good for me. Also, he’s probably right; plastic will probably wear better than metal.


I left a few minutes later with a nice pair of plastic frames. I’d forgotten how intense! my most recently-updated prescription was; as I stepped out onto the street, I think I could see the past and future simultaneously.


Everyone says I look younger now.


So: my funny little optician has (inadvertently) given me the best fifty-fifth birthday present of all.

---

Finding out what the yellow flowers are called

---

I walk to work most days. Some days I walk all the way, which takes about thirty minutes. Most days I ride the Providence trolley with Partner; I get off on Wickenden Street, which is about a fifteen-minute walk from my office.

 

 

I walk past a florist, and a used-record store, and a couple of restaurants and bars, and a hardware store, and two coffeeshops, and a pizzeria, and an art-supply store.

 

 

Then I walk through a field of flowers.

 

 

I-195 used to run through the center of Providence. They rerouted it a few years ago. All of the former interstate-highway space is now a green boggy wilderness, full of weeds and flowers. (Rhode Island is largely swampland, so there’s a lot of squashy reedy ground reasserting itself too; geese are returning in large numbers, and those geese are mean.)

 

 

In the green space, there are yellow flowers, and white flowers, and yellow, and purple. I recognize some of them: carpet bugle, and butter-and-eggs, and milkweed, and even Jimson weed. There’s chicory, and vetch, and mullein. 

 

 

But there are a few I don’t know.

 

 

Some are yellow, on long spindly stalks. Some are small purple flowers on short stalks. Some are white, and small, and subtle.

 

 

Hm.

 

There’s an Ursula LeGuin short story called “The Day Before The Revolution.” It’s about an old woman, Laia, who has inspired a revolution, but is now too old to care about it: all she can think about is her own past, and her dead husband, and the moments of joy in her life.

 

 

At the end of the story, she goes upstairs to her room to rest, and probably to die. On the way,  she looks out the window at a field of yellow flowers, the same flowers in which she lay down with her husband for the first time. And the last line is: “Eighty-five years, and she never had time to find out what the yellow flowers were called.”

 

 

I understand this.

 

 

I want to find out what the yellow flowers in the green field are called, before it's too late.

---

 

The death of Mike Wallace

---

Mike Wallace died this past weekend.  Andy Rooney (of the unruly eyebrows) died last November.

 

 

The old CBS brigade is beginning to fade away.

 

 

A few of the ancients are still alive.  Charles Osgood (age 79) still anchors “CBS Sunday Morning.”  Morley Safer (age 80) is still around, I think.  Bob Schieffer  (age 75) still hosts “Face the Nation,” also on Sunday mornings; he’s wonderful, but he seems to be getting a big weaker over the past few years.  The wonderful Bill Geist (a mere baby at age 66) is still going strong. 

 

 

But still!

 

 

CBS – journalistically, anyway – is an octogenarian’s network.  Look at the list above!  They’re old!  There are a few younger correspondents – the lamentable Steve Hartman, for example, with his mournful insincere face – but they’re the exception.  (And Steve Hartman, let’s face it, is just a feeble Charles Kuralt wannabe.)

 

 

Listen, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mind old.  I’m getting there myself.  I’m fifty-four going on fifty-five, with sciatica and kidney stones.  I understand the demographic, and the concerns.

 

 

But even I become impatient with CBS’s news division when they explain the “Internet” to me as if it’s a strange new concept, or “Whole Foods,” or “Cyndi Lauper.”

 

 

I’ve said before that CBS is the geezer network.

 

 

I thought I was exaggerating.

 

 

I was wrong.

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Grandma's first public breakdown

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Most families have stories that start like this: “Grandma was running around the house looking for her glasses, fit to be tied!  And then Tillie said: Grandma, you silly thing, they’re right on top of your head . . . “

 

 

This is very amusing.  It is probably also the Beginning of the End for Grandma.

 

 

A few months ago, I myself had a Grandma moment.

 

 

I went to Rhode Island Hospital for a diagnostic X-ray.  The technician was a lean older guy, probably around my age (maybe a little younger). He was a little brusque at first.  “Go in here,” he said, pointing to a cubicle about the size of an airplane toilet, “and strip to your underwear, shoes, and socks.”  He gave me a smock.  “Put this on.   Once you’re ready, go have a seat, and I’ll come get you.”

 

 

Then he gave me a plastic bag marked PERSONAL BELONGINGS and left.

 

 

I was nervous and befuddled.  I know how to take my clothes off, so I did that first.  I put on the smock; I had a little trouble tying it, but I reassured myself that most people probably have trouble tying a knot from behind. 

 

 

Now: PERSONAL BELONGINGS.  Okay.  Wallet, keys, BlackBerry, pen.

 

 

I’d just come from work, so I also had my suitcase, and a bag of other miscellaneous stuff.  It was cold, so I had my heavy jacket and my nice scarf.  I created a huge pile of things, and was stowing them in all directions, with no real idea of what I was supposed to be doing.

 

 

Finally I organized everything, and felt very calm.

 

 

And then I realized that the PERSONAL BELONGINGS bag was missing.

 

 

Wallet!  Keys!  BlackBerry!

 

 

I searched frantically.  There wasn’t anywhere that the bag could have gone.  Could someone have come in and snatched it?  There’s no telling these days, it’s possible.  I was frantic –

 

 

Radiologist comes back in.  “Ready?” he says blandly.

 

 

“I had the bag!” I babble.  “The Personal Belongings bag!  And it’s gone!  Did someone take it?  Did – “

 

 

“It’s right there,” he says calmly.  “You’re carrying it right now.”

 

 

And sure enough, there it was.  I’d put the PERSONAL BELONGINGS bag into the other bag I’d been carrying, and looped it over my shoulder, and forgotten all about it.

 

 

The radiologist was very solicitous and sweet after that.  He helped me re-tie the back of my smock.  He walked me very slowly to the X-ray table.  He talked to me very soothingly, asking me all kinds of questions – Where did I work? What did I do? Where was I from? – and I’m sure it was his usual schtick, but he seemed especially determined to calm me down and reassure me. 

 

 

Kind of the way you do with a mental patient.

 

 

It’s official, kids.  I’m a Goofy Grandma who forgets that the glasses are right on top of her head.

 

 

Oh please someone shoot me.

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Older and wiser

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 When I was a kid, I had no idea what the adults were talking about most of the time.  I wanted desperately to figure out what was going on.

 

 

In high school, and in college, I realized that – inside – I did not feel like a grownup.  I was faking it.  I monitored everything: what I said, what I did.  And I fell short.

 

 

Graduate school: even worse.  I felt like a terrible poser, and completely inept as a human being.

 

 

Then working in a real job, and then in the Peace Corps, and then working again.  Inside, I still felt five years old.  I managed to fake it once in a while, but I still felt like a kid.

 

 

However:

 

 

Recently I took a friend to lunch, and she told me, in her funny rushing confidential way, the very sad story of her mother's recent passing.  And I commiserated with her. 

 

 

And I realized, about halfway through, that I didn't need to worry about acting like a grownup anymore. 

 

 

For one thing, I'm just too old to worry about it anymore.  And that's one of the secrets I didn't know: you don't learn it.  It just happens, with age and experience.

 

 

And for another thing, we were talking about deaths in the family, and cleaning the house and throwing things away and dealing with grief and guilt. These are things I know first-hand.  No problem.

 

 

So, at last, I find I can talk and act like a grownup.

 

 

And all I really want to do is be a kid again.

 

 

Go figure.

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