Crap Like Clockwork

I heard that line yesterday as two guys about my age who didn't think anyone was listening were discussing their medical maladies. More ominously, I completely understood it. I can remember as kids we talked about baseball cards, later it was girls and then later, bosses, followed by our kids and our lawns and now as the hour grows even later, internal plumbing and other torments.

Thirty years ago I didn't know anyone my current age. I don't think I wondered what happened to geezers, I just didn't care since I didn't know any. And now I'm a poster child for them. I've reached an age where for most others on the planet I am, for all intents and purposes, invisible. I'm just another shriveled sack of skin, graying and fraying at the temples, around whom life flows without stopping as I shuffle off to Buffalo and Points Yonder Somewhere..

I have a phone smarter than I am, and I'm dumber than a sack of hair so don't get a swelled head, Android. Now when things break around the house, from the computer to the car, not only do I not understand what broke, even after they are repaired I still don't get that, either. The Young Turk I fancied myself to be a lifetime ago has become an Old Fart. I still have my teeth and some of my hair but most of everything else is on permanent loan.

The quiet decline began at some point in my past I can no longer remember or (better phrased) I simply paid no attention to. When does a Second Chance become your last chance? Only in retrospect. You don't miss your water until your well runs dry at which time the boast I overheard yesterday takes on a plaintive and pitiful urgency, until it, too, no longer matters. Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Some ships have already sailed.

-bill kenny