ELDERLY? REALLY?

“An elderly couple died today,” said the news announcer.  John, age 66 and his wife Jane, age 64 were killed in an auto accident.”

Elderly?  Really?  What does that make me?  Elderly?  Age 66…elderly?  I am shocked at the word used to describe the age of this couple.  The one big surprise as I have aged, is that in my mind, I feel the same as I did when I was 20…30….40….50….60…(picture me laughing right now).  The only difference today from when I was 20 is that my mind and body are not in sync.  

I’ll be outside in the garden, doing what I love—forgetting time and enjoying the birds serenade while I dig, plant and weed.  Then I suddenly realize my bending is not bending so easy and my face, now beet red is throwing a sweaty flush on me that causes me to pant.  A neighbor notices me and comments that it is time for a break.  A glass of water, good neighborly conversation, and twenty minutes get me right up—-well sort of right up…maybe push/pull up is a better description.  There is no popping up quickly as I did when I started the day.  My body won’t let it happen.

There is another thing my body won’t do these days….hold it’s pucker power.  You know what I mean!  I cough…I wet.  I sneeze…I wet.  I lift a heavy item…look out, it is a flood until I put it down.  I went to the doctor and he says do exercises.  So every commercial on TV, I find myself, “squeeze—hold—let go….squeeze—hold—let go—until the end of the commercial.  When I go back to the doctor I tell him nothing has changed.  So he decides that he must check it out for himself.  I soon find myself up on the table, legs in the air and him filling my bladder with water.  

“On the count of two,” he says, “cough twice.” 

Seeing that he is on a stool  with wheels, a bit too close for my comfort, I warn him that I have this problem and he should look out.

With his nurse at my head, and him at my bottom, he says, “Oh I’m use to that.”

With that I cough, and he flies backwards with his stool into the wall, sliding onto the floor in his attempted escape from the spray.  I could see the nurse swallowing hard the laugh she wanted to have.  I was so embarrassed that I have not been back to that doctor.  Living with no pucker power is my body showing it’s age, while my mind still thinks it is 20!

Yes, getting “elderly” has it’s crazy moments and if I didn’t have a sense of humor about it, I would crawl up into a cave until it was all over.  But my 20 year old mind says, hell no…go out and live a little and once in awhile you’ll be embarrassed.  So what.  

I just want to get old enough that I can get away with pinching a young man’s behind, and him not taking me seriously!  That’s when I know that I’m elderly.