Dating For Old People

Okay…
There has to be a limit to how much of this INSANITY a man can take.
I’m out here on the “Dating Scene” in Atlanta again. With all the other insanity that goes with getting old, dating is NOT one I wanted to do. What am I supposed to do go into a bar and start using my best pick-up lines? “Hey, baby, what’s YOUR sign?”
The answer is usually, “Stop.”
I don’t know if that means their sign is a ‘stop sign’ or if that line is so old you can’t see the line for the layers of dust on it so I just need to stop. Either way it’s not good from MY standpoint.
The best thing for ME to do, probably, is to forget about it. Do I REALLY want to go through meeting someone new again? Do I REALLY want to learn a whole new group of people? Do I REALLY want to find out all the little quirks about a woman that I’ll either find a way to live with or find I NEED to walk away from. And how many times can I do THAT?? I’m not one of those people who LOVES the ‘beginning’ of relationships and enjoys going from person to person to keep that ‘newness’ alive.
I like to be WITH someone.
Great. So I either go through the beginning over and over until that right person comes along, or I stay alone…. Great… Alone is looking better and better all the time...

The Battle Of The Bulge

Why is it SOOOO easy to put ON weight and so hard to get it off again? When I was a kid I could eat like a horse and my weight stayed the same. I could GORGE on food – no matter what kind – and my weight stayed the same. NOW it seems that all I have to do is LOOK at food and the weight goes on. And not in the proportions I ate it, either. NOOOO!! Food multiplies as I eat it and adds twice its weight to my love handles as I take in!!! So now I have to eat in much smaller amounts than I SHOULD have to just to stay even.
And why does it NEVER come off in the places I WANT it to come off? It always comes off NEXT TO where I want it to come off so that where I WANT it to come off looks even BIGGER!!! Lose the love handles??? NOOOOO. Lose above and below so the love handles look even BIGGER!!! Great… there’s nothing sexier in an old man than a bird-chest and big love handles. God loves his little jokes…
I know there are about a million diets out there – and I know they all work to one degree or another. The ones that advertise you’ll lose 200 pounds in a week are usually the ones to steer away from, but most of the others get the weight off with some kind of torture or other. “Eat only cardboard” or “Put a picture of a fat person on your refrigerator” (I think they may have discounted that the ‘fat person’ in the picture is actually the size we are trying to get down to) or “Eat only .” Whatever the diet they always get the weight off of you – and sometimes you have to be a little more patient than you want to be, but it still comes off. The problem is KEEPING it off!!!
For every million diets - and there seems to be at least that many - there are a handful of ‘maintenance programs.’ Perpetual diet and exercise seems to be the most predominant programs (continual torture for the rest of your life, basically), but it seems that the one that makes the most sense – as an aging person – is the timing of the meals. Eat the larger meals earlier in the day and eat smaller meals LATER in the day. Because as our bodies changed over the years we slowed down the digestive process. I’ve talked to all kinds of nutritionalists, personal trainers, doctors, nurses and read some of those celebrities who think they have something to add (and rarely do) – and the bottom line is you have to pay attention to WHEN you eat as well as how much. Because our bodies are slower than they used to be we have to eat our big meal earlier in the day. Sorry about that. I know we all like to sit around and watch night TV with our dinner, but that is when you should be having a VERY SMALL dinner or nothing at all. What you take in late is NOT going to get processed and you're going to end up with it in places you don't want it. Personally, I like to have popcorn without STUFF (that wonderful artery clogging butter!!) and my evening cocktail. Hey, get over it. There are some things I’m willing to give up and some things I plan to keep, even if I DO have to walk a few extra miles every day!!! I’ll give up the food, but the cocktail is NECESSARY to get through the kids and grandkids!!! I'm sure you could find a doctor or two who will tell me that will kill me, but when I was at the bar with my doctor the other night we BOTH had to agree alcohol is a necessary evil. She said there's always going to be SOMETHING that is going to kill us, but if you ask most of the 'centurians' how they lived so long the majority agree they had a shot or two to 'take the edge off' the day. Well, I'll probably from '8 Line' bus poisoning when I can't get out of its way fast enough, but I plan to go out happy. And that means I'm keeping the alcohol and the occassional cigar. Get over it.

Spring Pain

As each spring rolls around and the “get the yard trimmed up” and the “get in shape for the summer” bugs buzz in, there has to be a HUGE influx at the hospital from those of us who should know better than to be out there acting like we’re still kids. Yeah, we SHOULD know better, but it's one of those lessons we have to relearn every year. After all, it doesn't hurt when we're doing it – at least not for a long time. It's tomorrow and the day after that are going to get us.
All athletes grudgingly recognize when it's time to hang up the cleats. They postpone it as long as they can, but there comes a day when the ‘kids’ are quicker, stronger and no matter how hard the ‘old guys’ work they can no longer keep up. NO ONE wants to admit the years are passing us by. However, having said that, spring brings a whole new mindset to the aging fight - one that usually has a painful reminder at the end.
Today is a beautiful day in the Southeastern United States. It's spring. Pollen, bugs and love are all in the air. Suddenly, people who have been locked up in their houses all winter are out mowing their lawns, trimming bushes, going for jogs, hiking or working on that tan, going to the park or finding new ways to enjoy the day.
It's a wonderful thing - in theory.
Practice is a whole different matter when "you're not as young as you used to be." Spring is a cruel reminder of that fact. Putting aside the spider and snake bites, the painful sunburns, cases of poison ivy and poison oak, the lawn implement accidents, the heart attacks and those who got pecked because they thought the baby Canadian Geese were cute right up until the hissing parent geese took a chunk out of those who got too close. Let's put all that insanity aside for now. Instead, let's concentrate on the overexertion MOST of us above the age of 40 (and a lot who are younger, too) are going to feel tomorrow morning - and a few days after that.
All us ‘warriors’ go out there and take up the challenge every spring to fight off the onset of old age – well, some of us might be escaping the spouse and kids, but we’ll deal with that another time. We go face the elements and we try to drag out bodies into the same decade as our minds – even though that gap is always widening.
Ben Gay sales have GOT to go through the roof this time of year. Chiropractors, doctors and emergency rooms for us old warriors have to be extra busy. Then there are the painkillers we're all going to be taking for the next few days. The whole country will be walking around in a drooling daze until the muscles start to get a little tone back in them. No matter how young we THINK we are nor how good of shape we were in before winter set in last year and we went into hibernation, every year we're a little further from being "in shape" than we were last year this time and it's going to take a little longer to get back to even where we were LAST year. It's a sad reality we all fight tooth-and-nail.
So I thought we all could use a little solace. While you're sitting there nursing your pains pleading for someone to bring you a drink, icing your joints and muscles and deciding how many pills it will take to make it stop hurting, remember you're not alone in your pain. All of us SHOULD have known better. Hey… it's nothing some ice, Ben Gay and a few aspirin can't fix, right?
Maybe we'll remember NEXT weekend to slow it down a little!

Desserts

There I was having lunch with a friend and – after choking down a lunch salad and wondering why I passed on the burger and fries – the server came over and asked us if we wanted dessert. As with all desserts they looked delicious. Well, we KNEW better than to order one. He might as well as bring them over with a roll of duct tape so we can apply the dessert directly to bellies or hips rather than go through the whole torture of ‘guilting’ ourselves and have them end up there in the first place. Come on, dessert? Of course we WANT dessert, but we’ve spent the better part of our lives NOT eating desserts because we know what it’s going to do to our waistlines. ARGH!!!
Servers seem to know they’re torturing us when they come offering desserts. It’s in the glint in their eyes. They get their own little special revenge on us for having to bring us our food by tempting us with desserts they KNOW have a million calories in them. There must be a special ‘evil’ in servers that drives them to insanity. They seem to enjoy tempting us that way. They come to the table and offer us something they KNOW we want and then watch us squirm trying to wrestle with whether or not we can order one. Maybe if we split it…
It was on the way home I asked the question I should have asked at the table. Why NOT have the dessert? I exercise regularly, I get my physicals like I’m supposed to, I’m not in immanent danger of dying (that I know of) and a dessert once in awhile is a good idea. I think I can fight down the calories!! Just because I’m getting older doesn’t mean I can’t fight down the calories of a dessert as well as a youngster!!!
And then there was the REAL personal revelation. What am I saving myself for? Age has taken care of that 34-inch waistline. Years of work and the inability to get out there and work out have taken away the pecs, abs and biceps of steel. No matter what I eat I’m not going to get more hair on my head. No, I’m not advocating losing my mind and eating everything that comes across the lunch counter and gaining 200 pounds, but a dessert once in awhile is something we need to savor. For all I know I could be wrong about immanent death and look what I would miss. And for what?? It’s not like I’m going to be dancing in the strip clubs anytime soon. No one puts dollar bills in the thong of a man my age – trust me. Life is too short to give up the treats. We’ve all live too long and hard not to reward ourselves a little. If it doesn’t threaten my life, it’s time to go for it…

Canceling Playboy

My kids have entirely ruined ‘Playboy” magazine for me.
One of the breakout moments of my life was when I started getting ‘Playboy’ sent to the house when I was a teenager. Wow! How cool!! Mom HATED it and Dad told me to read them in my room, but it was COOL! Granted, the women were OLDER than me at that point, but woohoo, I was the only kid on the block – probably in the city - getting the ‘Playboy’ delivered to the house. Of course, I was getting it for the articles (wink, wink) like every other red-blooded American guy does, but the women were a GREAT distraction between articles.
Well, the years have gone by and I had to cancel my subscription to ‘Playboy.’ I HAD to give it up… WHEN did Hef start hiring BABIES to be the foldouts?? OH MY GOD!! Granted, the women I looked at when I was a kid and thought they were SOOO hot are now grandmothers in their 60s, but what happened?? Now I see the women in the magazine and I feel like I should be looking over my shoulder for one of those camera crews to come arrest me for looking at KIDS!!!
I blame it ENTIRELY on MY kids. They are now older than the models in the magazine and that makes me feel like I need a shower! When my kids and their friends ran around in skimpy clothes I sent them off to put on more clothes. I think that’s when I knew it was time for ‘Playboy’ to go. When I was THEIR age – my kids and their friends – I was looking for the girls to take it off!! Now time has passed me by and I’m telling the kids to go put clothes ON!! Sorry, Hef… You know I love you, but… you need to start a magazine with WOMEN in it, not kids. Forty and up ONLY!!! There’s a market for it out here. As a large percentage of the population moves into our… second half… we need to have REAL women to look at that are not going to get us arrested! Or make us FEEL like we’re going to be arrested. So, another of the icons of my youth has fallen by the wayside. What is the world coming to???

Hip Replacement - Really??

Say it ain’t so, Joe!!
Well, it is. Get over it.
I don’t feel like I’m any older than back when I was in college. Now… that was more years ago than I care to remind myself, but let’s just say I keep getting notices from the AARP telling me it’s a good idea to join up. I think they might be trying to tell me something like I’m getting old!!!
And then there are all those emails that keep showing up asking if we remember when the 50’s were around, or what it was like to live under the threat of nuclear extinction in the 60’s. Sure do!! I remember Vietnam! I remember Kennedy and Eisenhower. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, 444 days of hostages in Iran and the Pueblo incident. So what’s the point?? I think they want to rub it in. I keep telling the grandkids I don’t NEED history books, I LIVED it and my memory is still fine!! At least I think it is. As I was walking with my one-year-old grandson yesterday it occurred to me that when he’s my age I’ll be DEAD!!! The same probably applies to his 9 and 6 year old sisters, too, but it was HIM that made me feel it. That would make me over 100 when he’s my age and the odds of living to over 100 are pretty slim – at least at this point.
I think the thing that brought age home the hardest was when one of the guys I grew up with, we went through school together, played football on the high school team together, went to college together and got into all kinds of trouble together (including almost getting girls dorm shut down – but we’ll save that for another day) got a hip replacement!! How is that possible? How is it possible for one of us YOUNG guys to need a hip replacement? We’re too young for that.
As soon as I found out we were on the phone discussing this. First, I wanted to be supportive, but… There’s just NO WAY we should be looking at getting OLD!!
Well… we are. Things are starting to wear out. Some of our classmates are already DEAD from heart attacks and the problems that start to show up when you get old. OLD!!!! Argh!!!!
I suppose the first clue should have come when we started losing grandparents, then our parents went. I suppose it was just a matter of time before WE started to go!! But still…Aging is tough to take. Yes, we knew it was coming from the time we were born. Yes, every generation has gone through it since the dawn of time. Yes, it’s inevitable. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening to ME and my friends and I’m not happy about it!! Nor is anyone else in my generation. The hippies generation should NOT get old!!! Then why ARE we???