Having a sense of humor is a prerequisite for aging, because without it, you might as well cash in the chips right now. The three days I spent at Sea Isle with my friends was a great observation on how to laugh at ourselves. There is something wonderful about aging with humor. Oh I know, we all hear how tough it can be…and it can. We all know those whose loneliness is so overwhelming that all they do is complain but do not have the spunk to get up and walk away from it. So many of us find ourselves alone and don’t enjoy it and that is true too.
But aging, and what happens to us and our bodies can, with the right frame of spirit, fill us with much laughter. If you are a woman, you most likely have spent much of your life obsessing over body image. I know I have. In fifth grade, my report card shows me at 1/2 inch off my adult height and 155 lbs, a weight I carried until the pregnancy of my first child. Yet in childhood, I never felt pretty—only fat because I was bigger than others in my class. My eighth grade autograph book has comments from fellow students which read, “fatty, fatty, two by four, can’t get through the kitchen door…”, which only reinforced my own negative self image. But age, ah, the blessed age…fills me with permission to just enjoy the day as I am without worrying about how thin or beautiful I am. Instead, I just have fun, laugh and most likely pee myself!
The body does fail us as we age, but our mind can show us the way to prevail through any embarrassing moment. The ladies who spent the three days at Sea Isle ranged in age from early 60’s to mid 70’s. As “older” woman (notice I did not use the word elderly), we tend to lose our pucker power. After a delightful lunch, we started out on the promenade of shops when one of us let go of a bit of gas. Well, maybe more than a bit…more like the air escaping from a balloon blown up (a BIG balloon) and let go…you know that slapping sound of the two sides smacking together! We were prepared to continue our stroll as if nothing took place but the party in question turned and apologized—first to the right, then the left and then behind her. We all lost control of ourselves and started laughing and when turning around noticed a man we just passed on a bench, had joined us in our uncontrollable laughter…all the while we continued to try and move on down the road, some of us having to squeeze tight to keep from any more embarrassing moments to occur. A block later, you could still hear us laughing and trying to walk at the same time.
It reminded me of a time when my daughter and I attended a reading at the Pearl Buck House in Perkasie. A high-priced ticketed event with David and Julie Eisenhower hosting, Joliene and I felt a little out of our league. As we got out of our car, we noticed a couple of “older” women, dressed in their fur and diamonds heading out ahead of us. While strolling behind them on the walk, we began to giggle as every step the fur clad women took, was accompanied by a letting go of gas…each step…was poot…poot…poot… a sound that at once let me know I no longer felt out of place in this very prestigious setting.
Prior to my gallbladder surgery, every meal would and could fill me with gas. I sometimes would try and hide the fact that it was happening by hiccoughing or sneezing at the same time, causing my kids to refer to these moments as “hic-hachoo-farts”. No amount of distracting noise could hide the facts of my embarrassment.
Yes, on many levels I do love aging because when embarrassing things do happen, I just laugh and say, “You know—I am an old person!”
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