Saturday, November 6, 2021

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.



43 comments:

  1. Oh, I KNOW I'm shorter without having to actually measure myself. I can't reach shelves in my kitchen that I could reach before without the stepstool. I was happy when ankle-length and capri styles came into fashion because they generally run 27 inches in length, so they fit perfectly without hemming.

    I have one of those "grabby sticks" to get things off higher shelves. I'm thinking of taking it with me to the food store. Everything I want is always on the highest shelf, and there's seldom a tall person around when you need one. I've been scolded by sales help for climbing on the shelves more than once.

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  2. What is Baby Murr eating? A raw rib from an extinct giant species of cow?

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  3. Loved the Murr photos, and boy are you singing my song. I turned 60 a week ago, and I'm trying to come to terms that technically I'm not even middle age anymore. I swear I feel less than half that in age (around an inch deep in my noggin). Anyway, a sweet funny read! :^)

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    1. Some of those signs start to come fast. Particularly if you sat on your butt for the entire year of 2020.

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  4. Yaz's grandson?!? Holy shit! I noticed some years ago that I might think a young woman was particularly attractive. Then I would notice her mother and get even more excited. Ah,the good old days.

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  5. Still have to remind myself that I'm a senior! In my mind I'm always going to be 30. LOL!

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    1. In my mind I'm still around eight. Some of those middle years are better left unremembered.

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  6. All of this is sooooo true!! I do make myself a year older by accident...rarely younger, though.

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  7. Oh yes. Except that some days dirt is a young whipper snapper that needs me to give it a good talking too.

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  8. Like the hat! Once a Red Sox fan, always a Red Sox fan (like me). MIT fraternity was just off Kenmore Square with a great view of the Citgo sign. Used to know the pattern.

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    1. The purity of my devotion to the Red Sox has suffered since they actually started winning.

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  9. The scroll bars are annoying, they should have the option where you just type in those numbers. those of us who can still remember them that is.

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    1. I hate when you give them a big whoosh and you're still only in the 1980s.

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  10. You are brilliant as always and Baby Murr looks exactly like Margaret!

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  11. Oh boy does this hit home, Murr. Age, height, Lack of, and grabbystick too. I keep a metal, extendable back scratcher in my purse for shopping- and often get "love" for it from other shoppers who vow to do likewise.

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    1. I just sit under the desired item and whimper and then someone gets to feel good for helping me.

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  12. I had the unusual experience last week of being approached during a concert intermission by one of the handsome, musical, chatty whippersnappers in the band, who might have been in his early 50's, saying to me, with a rather intimate (I thought) amount of intense eye contact (ooh)and a warm, lovely smile, "We're about the same age, right?" I am almost 70. Something from the past paid a fleeting visit. I think I felt the pull of ancient teenage hormones weakly puddling in my brain. I suddenly had the odd sensation that I was being flirted with, and that I knew what to do.

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    1. Susan, the thing is, “hormones weakly puddling in my brain” shows a certain age related confusion, right there. Still, a nice musical interlude.

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    2. Huh. All I ever got was that time the teenagers in the car were tailing me when I was on my bike and yelled out "Nice ass!" and then they passed me, looked back, and said "Sorry, ma'am!"

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    3. Oh lord. They had to add the "ma'am."

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    4. Oh, man. That actually made me feel hotter than an episode of Outlander. Thanks, Susan!

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  13. My mother used to say that no matter how old she actually was, she was still sixteen inside.

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    1. I think most of us have an internal age. Mine's eight. I skipped right over the heavy drinking years.

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  14. I can already see I am going to love your blog. And I have always considered my self to be just about 9, so we are the same age! Hmmm I might be older by far!

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    1. If you're nine, you're a whole year older than internal me.

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  15. When I started to need to do the math to figure out my age, I knew I was getting old. Then I started to have trouble with the subtraction. So I suppose that means that I am well and truly old. My 101-year-old aunt in law has lots of trouble because the computer gizmos don't recognize 1920 as a birthdate. So I guess I don't have to deal with that. Yet.

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    1. You mean it doesn't scroll that far? Man. That should wake you up.

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  16. Before you even said it it had to be Durgin Park. As the surliest ladies ran the room, you’d have been right at home.

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    1. The first time I went there, my sister enticed me with "meat bigger than your head and the meanest waitresses on the planet."

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  17. Thanks, old lady. Great read. I didn't know you were a Sox fan. Or maybe I did. I forget.

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