OLD AGE BLUES

  Every day I get a plethora of things in the mail that remind me of how old I am. Things from the A.A.R.P Insurance Company, for instance, and their newsletter and magazine. People call and want to sell me a “step-in bathtub,” or a “grabber” for taking things off high shelves. I can just imagine what would happen in that tub if I forgot, and opened the door before draining it. All it would take is the doorbell ringing, or a phone call, and I would be washing my dog out the front door of the house. Today I got my monthly letter from the scooter store. I’m supposed to take this test, and call them immediately if I answered “Yes,” to any of the questions—like, “Have you fallen in the past twelve months?” I fall once a month, and that’s in a good month. I invented the Stop, Drop and Roll and I wasn’t even on fire. A good day is when I don’t fall on the dog, but the dog is safer with me falling occasionally, then getting run over by a scooter chair. My doctor asked me once, how long has it been since I had sex? I asked him if this was a memory test, or a sex test. Either way, I failed.

I’m supposed to eat some kind of new fangled yogurt to cut down on intestinal gas.  I did tell you I live by myself, didn’t I? If I do have company, I’m right back to the dog taking the blame. Besides, in my family, it’s genetic. I once had an uncle who could toot out the first verse of the Happy Birthday Song, in G Minor, without lifting a foot. My dear wife was always cracking me across the back of the head if we drove within a mile of a manure spreader. Miss her—but don’t miss that.

Someone talked us into buying a Sleep Number® bed a while back. Now that I’m alone, I like to sleep in the middle of the bed and the dog—yes, you guessed it—ate the thing that changes the settings. So my right side is sleeping on an eighty-six, and my left side is on a twenty-one. I walk in circles for the first part of the day because I have one limber leg and one stiff one. I tried sleeping on my stomach half the night to balance things out, but then I can’t see the TV, and I drool too much.

Someday, when I’m all worn out, I am going to get a scooter chair with a continental kit and cruiser skirts. It will have a built-in cooler for beverages, and it will recline for sleeping—then I can get rid of all of the furniture in the house. It will have side pockets for my remote controls, and snow tires and four wheel drive, so I can take it to town in any kind of weather. Oh yes, and a heated seat, and it will do fifty-five on the straightaway. It will have a six-rack CD changer, AM-FM radio and radar detectors. It will be dual fuel, electric and methane, but that’s all I am going to say about that. I thought I was done with that methane subject in paragraph two, but I guess not. It keeps coming back up—no pun intended.

Each morning I go through a little test when I wake up. Today it went like this. Wrist hurts from raking leaves. That’s bad. Back hurts from lifting leaves. That’s bad. Finger hurts from dog bite. That’s bad. Asthma today is only a 2 on the 1-10 scale. That’s good. There is one more thing bugging me though today—if I can just think of it.-- Wait for it. -- Oh yeah! I got to go to the bathroom. That’s excellent.