The Scroll Bar Of Old Age

Baby Murr

Ironically, one of the ways you can tell you're old is you don't remember how old you are.

Last month I heard the COVID booster shot was going to be available for people 65 and older and my first thought was Oh, shit. Then I remembered that not only was 65 already in the rear view mirror, it was pretty far back in the block.

There are other signs. For instance, you can tell you're short when you cut off the bottoms of your new pants to hem them and you discover the remnants could make a tube top for a harbor seal. You always knew you were short, of course, but it can slip your mind because you can still see everything from where you're standing, as far as that goes. You're not going to know you're shorter until they mention it at the doctor's office, and then you can go ahead and argue with them over it. After all, your height, down to the quarter-inch, is a known commodity and a matter of record. Also, you're still eight years old.

So back to that.

It's a sign when you see a particularly tasty specimen of a 25-year-old man with brown eyes and silky hair and a hint of humor in the eyebrows and graceful movement of his splendid but not overdone musculature and the first thing you think is I wonder if he does ladder work? I could use my gutters cleaned.

 

It's a sign when you're watching baseball and someone named Michael Yastrzemski gets up to bat and you think Holy cow! I wonder if that's Carl Yastrzemski's son! Good old Yaz with the Boston Red Sox! Why, it was just yesterday I was living in Boston during the '75 World Series! GO YAZ!! and you look it up and the dude is his grandson.

 

It's a sign when you're trying to get your Alexa thingy to do something for you by calling her name and all you can say is Hey, Lady!

 

Old Bat Murr

But mostly you are wieldy with the internet and a thoroughly modern person, not at all old, until you navigate an online form and when you have to put in your birth year you have to spin that scrollbar twelve times like it's the Wheel Of Fortune.

 

All of this can come as a shock to you. And that is because you are the same on the inside as you ever were. Your packaging may have changed--maybe a lot--and your contents may have shifted but those contents are the same as they ever were. You are in the bridge of a tugboat that's still chugging and the view out the window is the same as ever, except the dock is getting closer.

 

But I guarantee when I pull up to that dock I'm going to be thinking Hey, I wasn't done yet and I was just about to get serious.