There was no tragedy category, so here I am.
I'm a 53 year-old walk-in clinic doctor, but In my head I'm still 18.
Like last summer when I thought I was 18 as I lunged for a tennis ball gently plopped over the net by my 15 year old son. I thought I'd show off. I thought I'd show him how tennis is really played. Instead I spent the next four weeks explaining to people that the oozing from my trousers was from friction burns to my knees from hitting a tennis net. I guess I'd lost some of my old stopping power. No amount of bandaging would prevent my trousers from getting soaked whenever I crouched to examine my infant patients in their parents arms.
In my mind I'm quick and clever. Like the time I was explaining some of the finer points of genetics, with great enthusiasm, to a young Serbian lady cutting my hair at First Choice . As she was trimming the hair that tends to grow inside my ears, I pointed out that "hairy ears" was a special trait that was carried by the Y-chromosome and that because of this it was inherited from father to son, generation after generation.
"Naw," she said. "That's just something that old guys get."
Well, that sure put me in my place.
She probably thought I was coming on to her. I wasn't, ...really.
We watch a lot of TV. Lately, it doesn't seem to matter at all whether my wife and I have seen a movie before. It's like: "I don't remember that part. I'm really glad we saw this again." Everything old seems new again. I figure eventually we'll only need to own a single movie and just watch it over and over again.
I have to be careful. Like a lot of old guys, at times I find myself being downright curmudgeonly. Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame has nothing on me. I find my sentences starting with phrases like "You know, the trouble with...". Then I catch myself. Eventually I realize that resistance is futile. Now, I find that complaining has risen to the level of an art form for me. In fact in my curmudgeonly fashion it's one of the few things I can be truly grateful for any more.
I've been accused of talking slowly...almost as if there were such a thing as a Canadian drawl, a northern drawl. I'm pretty sure there isn't. Sometimes I even catch people acting distracted while I'm speaking to them. Then, I try to talk a little faster. I don't like to waste their time. I really don't.
Which brings us back to you and your tendency to be in denial about your own aging.
Stop it!
Wake up! Smell the roses. Climb that mountain. Its not too late
...yet