On Getting Older

A wry look at reaching 60

Having now reached the age of 60, I have to accept that, unless I have an above average chance of reaching 120, I can't really call myself middle aged any more. I'm considering inventing new age groups: Early Mature is the current favourite with Pre-Senior as a close runner-up. With a little creativity, I might not have to call myself Old until Im past 85.

Old age really does creep up on you without you noticing. I still feel like a young man. I still enjoy many of the things I enjoyed as a young man and even find I can keep at it longer, albeit largely because they take a bit longer. But there are clues, of course: My friends start looking older, policemen, politicians and doctors start looking younger and it seems that every week there's a TV obituary to one or the other of the Superstars that defined my generation.

OK. Although I said I still feel like a young man, I admit that I have noticed certain changes. As a young man, if I felt like kicking a can, I'd damn well kick a can. I didn't used to worry about the likelihood of falling over and breaking my hip. I didn't used to have to shuffle my food around in my mouth trying to find the best tooth to chew my steak with and I seem to recall being able to accomplish athletic feats such as getting up from a chair without the accompanying cry of: "EEAAAARGHAAAHEEEAAAH!"

The ambition to one day rule the world has been replaced with the optimistic hope that nursing homes will have improved by the time my offspring decide I'm too feeble to live at home and far too irritating to live with them. The anxieties of parenting have faded with the relieved satisfaction that my kids survived my dysfunctionality without having to go into therapy.

I'm too slow to live fast, too old to die young and the window of opportunity for a good-looking corpse has long since passed. When did that happen?? It's as if Time suddenly jumped a couple of decades while I was in the john giving verbal encouragement to my urethra... Come on! You can do it! One minute I'm a teenage anarchist hunched over a bhong and contemplating the Psychic Revolution and the next minute... well, I'm looking at that same bhong and contemplating converting it into something that might save me having to get out of bed to pee (it can be done; I'm sure of it).

My body has become something of a mystery to me. I expected to go bald, as every male on both sides of my genealogy has done so. But, if hair loss is an aspect of growing old, why am I sprouting hair from every orifice? My nose, my ears, my... well, you get the picture. It seems that the hair that once confined itself to my scalp is being redistributed. I'm sure that Nature has a very good reason for this but I can't for the life of me figure out what conceivable misfortune is likely befall me that is directly attributable to not having enough hair up my nose!

The hair of my eyebrows, which seemed content to confine itself to growing to a finite length throughout most of my life, has suddenly lost the art of restraint. My eyebrows now have to be trimmed and combed, my nose-hairs have to be trimmed, my ear-hairs have to be trimmed while my head, which once sported the bohemian hairstyles that so outraged my parents' generation, now requires nothing more than a wipe with a damp cloth.

As a young man, I was attracted to older women. I still find older women quite attractive; they're just thinner on the ground these days. Nevertheless, I can't pass a geriatric home without pulling my tummy in... just in case.

All in all, getting older is not so bad. Elastic waistbands have replaced the neo-medieval belts I strapped to my hips in the 70s and the imperative to be Cool conveniently evaporated with the onset of dribbling so I guess life has become easier and more comfortable. The 'Sweet Bird Of Youth' that flew so fast, eager to explore its world is now a rather decrepit chicken that is not only in no particular hurry but can't remember where it was going anyway.

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