By Dick Brooks
For Capital Region Independent Media
I’ve noticed a rather unique thing that happens as you age, in my case, gracefully.
Your mind picks a pleasant spot and parks there. You cease to grow any older, even the mirror doesn’t jar you back to reality. You look at the image in it and see yourself as you want to be. If I pull in my tummy, suck up a chin or two, put a baseball cap on to cover the shiny area of hair desertion and take off my glasses, I look just like I did at 25, at least until I have to move or breathe.
Unfortunately for them, your friends can’t drink from your mental fountain of youth and boy! are they getting old. Go to a high school reunion and you’ll see what I mean. You stand there wondering what a youngster like you is doing in this room filled with old people asking each other who they used to be.
While you’re in your mental holding pattern and all your friends and acquaintances are shrinking and wrinkling around you, there are a couple of groups that reverse the process.
First is the service group — the kids behind the counter look like they are 12 or so; the cashier in the supermarket, you know the one with the red bead piercing her tongue and the safety pin through her eyebrow, can’t be out of elementary school yet, and I think the guys in the computer store are wearing those baggy pants to hide the fact that some are still in diapers. The kid who works on my car has a bag full of plastic tools on his workbench and has never seen a carburetor. My accountant looks strikingly like the kid who mows my neighbor’s lawn and I haven’t seen any bank cashier lately who looks old enough to have their own credit card. I see more and more police officers riding bikes. I can understand that but the last one I saw had taped baseball cards to his spokes and was making motorcycle sounds as he rode.
Secondly and most scary are those in the medical field. Eight-year-olds just shouldn’t be allowed to practice medicine but there they are, stethoscope around their neck and Game Boy in their pocket telling you they want to cut you open and see what’s wrong. The hospital parking lot is full of bicycles and I swear I saw a young girl, wearing a pin that said she was a doctor, walking in with a pink Barbie medical bag. My dentist’s mother drives him to work, he takes impressions with Playdough and I’m not sure, but I think my pharmacist is standing on a box so he can see over the counter and he wears a Kermit the Frog wristwatch.
I just don’t like the thought that I’m putting my life into the hands of someone that’s younger than the shoes I have on.
Guess I’ll just have to tough it out. Aging, even gracefully, isn’t for the weak of heart.
Thought for the week — Young men wish: love, money and health. One day, they’ll say: health, money and love.
Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.
Reach columnist Dick Brooks at whittle12124@yahoo.com.
