©Arlene R. Taylor, PhD 

This business about going through the aging process is a new adventure. It is a pity that no practice run is available. After all, I can learn how to do many things well when I have some explicit instructions and sufficient practice time. Turns out aging is not like that. Life can change in a nanosecond. One day you’re doing well and the next everything is suddenly catawampus. Those things were happening to “other people,” not to me. I had always been health-and-wellness preventive.

As brain imaging research evolved, I knew there were more things I could do. Aging inevitably was involving me personally. Therefore, I had some decisions to make. How would I approach this process? As a death sentence or as a new adventure? I could become sad and depressed and stop looking at my pictures, or I could embrace the process and strategize on how to handle the changes as gracefully as possible. Humor came to my rescue. I could look at the funny side of the adventure.

Did you know that as you “age,” there are two things many people want to know about you? Sure, you do. Age and weight. Most are too polite and Emotionally Intelligent to ask. Others? Not so much. Some are missing even a crumb of social decorum. I tell them that age is simply a number. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Some follow me around, demanding to know the reason I refuse to disclose the number. Those I tell, “It’s really none of your business.” If they push me into a corner, metaphorically or literally—oh yes, they did!—demanding an answer I reply, “I already told you that age is simply a number and mine is unlisted.” If they protest that they just want to know if I am younger or older than they are, I reply, “Take your pick. Do you think knowing that will make you younger or older?” Some even have followed me out to my car. I told the last group, “I’m aiming to live to be a super-centenarian. I’ll let you know when that happens.” Immediately one said, “Maybe we won’t live that long, however long that is.” I said, “In that case I guess you will never know.” That response was not well received.

The weight question is interesting. For some I am too thin, for others bordering on plump. (I’ve learned that some clothing styles can make me look borderline obese. Horizontal dark and light stripes, for example.). One person had the nerve to ask my weight in stone. Stone? I said that since I was not made of stone and since I had never weighed myself in stone, I could not answer that question. “You must have flunked trigonometry,” the person said. Out of hearing distance, I laughed out loud. Actually, I flunked trigonometry—I must have missed the part about weight in stone. My mother had signed me up for a trigonometry course by snail mail—in the late 1800s no one had ever heard of the internet. My final grade was 16 percent. I thought my mother would die of apoplexy, seeing (she told me repeatedly) as she had received 100 percent on her final trig exam in high school. “How could I have a daughter who flunked trig?” she moaned aloud. Perhaps because I had no teacher or coach? Oh, well. Much later, I graduated with a master’s in epidemiology and health education. Thankfully, there was nothing in the curriculum about figuring out a person’s weight “in stone.” Fortunately, trigonometry was not a required course—all I needed was to pass statistics. No problem.

Life goes by at lightning speed, you know, especially if you have kids and are trying to raise them to be pillars of the community and not Ted Bundy copycats. There probably were some signs of advancing age, but at the time I failed to understand the connection. If my hairbrush seemed to have more than the usual amount of hair in it, I just figured that one of the grandkids had brushed the dog. I did not connect the hairbrush with what used be on my head.

Speaking of hair, I remember the first time I tried to brush a hair off my grandma’s shoulder—only to discover that it was still attached to her chin. That was ugly. Even with thick glasses, she had not noticed that thread-like strand until it objected to being separated from its root. After that, I began to notice random hair growth in several personal locations—sprouting from my nose, peaking from an ear, dangling from other body parts. My doctor just said to roll with it, as they likely would disappear as soon as my estrogen level fell. “Of course,” she added, “other problems will probably crop up as estrogen falls.” Goody, goody.

Then there is the “timer” issue. Initially, I thought there was no need to spend money on a timer. That was an error in judgement. After putting cookies in the oven to bake and promptly forgetting all about them, I made a quick trip to the store—okay, the timer probably wouldn’t have helped in that instance. I returned to see smoke drifting lazily from the oven and solid lumps of charcoal inside. My dear husband said that was a total waste of “valuable” resources. Our youngest son took some lumps and a hammer to school. Word was that he entertained the kindergarten kids by hitting each lump with a hammer and instantly creating a cloud of black dust.

I never had much interest in dermatology. Now? I’m learning a bunch of new words. Pedunculated acrochordon, for one. You know, those soft, skin-colored bits of epidermis that hang from the surface of the skin on a thin piece of tissue called a stalk or peduncle. They resemble micro-miniature tags on clothing merchandise. Last week my dermatologist said I had grown some pedunculated acrochordons. Benign, all. That was a minor comfort. Seems they hang around in places where they definitely do not belong. A TV commercial said you could treat them yourself. I’d give it a go except I cannot reach them all, so I am relegated to stripping down in the doctor’s office and bending around in fairly obscene postures.

Next visit, my epidemiologist said she had found some senile keratosis, also benign. I protested I was definitely not senile. “Well, it’s just a name,” she said. “Up through young adulthood, they are uncommon. Did you know that almost 83 million people living in the United States have skin keratosis or the ‘barnacles of aging’?” Barnacles of aging, my foot. There needs to be a less offensive name available. Really!

I was unprepared for wrinkles. Believe me, crepe has never been my favorite, on or off. I took the grandchildren out on Halloween and several other kids we met along the way looked up at me and said, “Good costume. You look like one of the Munsters on TV.” I was not wearing a costume.

The doctor suggested I sign up at a gym. The exercise coach was working with two other senior citizens. He suggested I look around and try things out. While waiting my turn, I did just that. I do not know how I got tangled up in wires and pulleys on one of their new-fangled machines. The exercise coach finally had to call for help to extricate me. The two of them said I should get a prize for doing something no one else in the history of their gym had ever been able to achieve. I canceled my new membership. Honestly, I thought an exercise coach was supposed to give you some cautionary tips before letting you have at it on our own. I got a couple of simple exercise machines and several rubber bands that do not attach to anything. Cost me much less than my gym membership.

I went to my granddaughter’s school fundraiser. Unfortunately (no glasses being handy), I put my “Green Card” in the collection envelope mistaking it for a crisp, newly folded $5 bill. Several days later, my “Green Card” showed up in the mail with a note showing that a serious donation could help compensate for the time and trouble it had taken the treasurer to track me down—which likely prevented me from being returned to my “mother country.” Good grief! Detectives from Sherlock Holmes to Perry Mason and beyond would have called that blackmail or extortion—whichever one properly applied to this situation. It saved me filing for a replacement “Green Card,” however, so I sent them another crisp, newly folded $5 bill. I also began the naturalization process.

The time may come when I have to stop parking in enormous parking lots. You know, the ones where you walk the length of several city blocks just to reach the front door. My friend told me to take a picture of my car. With the best of intentions, I started to do that before I headed for the store. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that a photo of the license plate does not tell me a great deal about where that license plate is actually located in the vast expanse of painted metal. I once spent four hours—four hours—in a humongous airport parking lot, driving around with security and looking for my car—only to finally realize that the attendant and I were looking for the wrong vehicle. We should have been looking for the car I had purchased two days prior to my taking a flight overseas. I mean, really; I had been gone for an entire month. The upside was that when we finally located my new car, the attendant dead-panned, “I rarely discuss work with my wife. This time, I may make an exception. I think she will get a kick out of this.” He never once chuckled or cracked a grin. I laughed all the way home.

If you forget your glasses, forget the car wash. I started into the wrong end of the carwash and the man was just as surprised as I was. He hopped out of his car and began yelling at me to back up. “BACK UP!” I did. I also saw him hit with a blast of water and slapped with that vertical roll of carpet-scrap thingy designed to wash the side of his car. I will admit, seeing that it cleaned his suit and tie as well, was almost worth the mistake. It certainly cut off his yelling. It seemed prudent, however, not to drive around to the regular entrance. I’d come back later with my glasses on. Can’t you just imagine the story he told around the office? “You will not believe this! Some old biddy...”

I learned it is important to have both your glasses and the overhead light on when selecting what to wear. Black with navy isn’t dreadful. If you’re talking about shoes, however, one being flat and one having heels, that negatively affects one’s balance. It is important to stay upright! Did you know that if perchance you fell and seriously hit your head, even if that mishap occurred half a century ago, it may only be a matter of time until you do not know the difference between a cauliflower and a computer? Scary thought that. It has put me right off cauliflower.

The timer just went off. Now I have to remember why I set it.... It’ll come. Perhaps a second or two more slowly, but it will come as I tell my brain to remind me. Aging is a new adventure. In my book of life, the process keeps me laughing and definitely beats the alternative!

P.S. I’ve learned that if you can laugh at yourself, you carry with you an endless supply of amusement. Yay! For humor!