The Age of Age

It seems that I’ve finally hit that age where one of the first topics that comes up when meeting up with old friends is ailments.  You know the conversation; it goes something like this:

“How are you doing?”

“Oh, pretty good.  My back is driving me crazy and my knee needs surgery but pretty good overall.  You?”

“Not too bad.  I’ve had some weird ‘bouts of vertigo and stomach issues but not too bad.”

“Ah…good to hear!”

Now, this is a fairly modest example in reality.  The real conversation tends to lean more towards ailments like gastrointestinal issues, heart, fatigue, prostate, you name it…all the sorts of things that don’t exactly make attractive or polite dinner conversation.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that no one really wants to hear about your diarrhea problems while eating green curry at a Thai restaurant.

There also seems to be a bit of stigma around bringing up constipation issues while eating chocolate ice cream, albeit understandably so.  But then again, how does someone answer the question of “how are you doing” in any other fashion?  I’m in that age now that most of how I’m doing somehow revolves around which ailment I’m currently battling and there’s unfortunately rarely a time when I don’t have less than 2 concurrent problems happening simultaneously.  Judging from most of my friends, I’m clearly not alone in this category.

I guess that’s just aging, right?  Quite possibly.  I’ll openly admit that it’s not my favorite thing in the world and if given the choice I’d probably choose eternal youth.  Aging so far has come with so many various surprises, things that they don’t forewarn you about in school and such, and most of them come as a semi vicious shock.  For example, it seems like it was almost literally on my 40^th birthday that various things started happening.  40 seems to come with a variety of special birthday “presents”:  first, you may start to not see quite as sharply as before.  Next, you begin having issues focusing and start spending more time staring blankly at words and paragraphs, especially on computer screens.  Then, your memory starts to also fade a bit.  You might also experience some trouble sleeping or possibly trouble peeing.  And, if that’s not enough for you to already handle, you’re also suddenly thrown into the pool for the risk of serious diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart attack, and stroke.  What more could you ask for, right?

One of the things that’s always puzzled me, though, is the weird silent internal body chemistry command that suddenly tells your various body hairs to start growing at an alarming rate and simply never stop.  I really don’t get it whatsoever.  What is this underhanded event that occurs that makes, say, an eyebrow hair suddenly not remember when to stop growing?  For 40+ years, it had no issue knowing it’s set growth limitation but, all of a sudden, it’s like your eyebrow hairs have lost their memory as well.  This is no joke.  It begins by these strange tickling sensations that you receive, like as if someone was pestering you with a feather duster.  In annoyance, you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror and notice that it’s actually you who is in fact tickling yourself, or more specifically an eyebrow hair has somehow grown so long as to tickle the earlobe on the opposite side of your head.  I mean, it’s insane!  The ear and nose hair is even worse.  I swear that I could probably grow one simple ear hair out and, by zig-zagging it across my head, I’d probably give off the illusion of a full head of hair.  I’ve pulled nose hairs out of my nose that I thought were cat hairs…from a long haired cat, no less.  The best part is that those same nose hairs grow so long that they tickle your nostril endlessly every time you breathe.  You end up looking like a lunatic frantically trying to find the offending hair.  People all around you think that you’re incessantly picking your nose but in truth you’re just madly searching for the offending hair.  Again, fun stuff.

Surgeries also used to seem more like unfortunate accident repair in the past.  These days, surgeries are more akin to tune-ups on your automobile except that your tires seem to be guaranteed only for about 1,500 miles rather than the usual 30-40k.  Doctor’s visits also often end with a shrug of the shoulders rather than any definitive solution.  More often than not, the diagnosis is something along the lines of “learn to live with it”.  Sigh.

One incredibly positive thing about aging is that I usually can’t remember to stay mad at anyone that long and so happiness seems to flow a lot easier than in the past.  It’s amazing how if you can’t remember negativity how much happier you can be in life!  So, I guess it’s not all bad after all.

Aging is certainly not for the weak of heart (pun intended).  Then again, considering the alternative, well…