Getting Old Sucks

I’ve enjoyed the ongoing dubious honor of being reminded on a regular basis these past few years that growing older has side effects.  Initially, these friendly reminders were positive.  Sort of small PSA’s aimed at letting me know I’d arrived in a sense.  Silver sidewalls, worldly-looking lines etched in a weathered face that hinted at experience and wisdom.  People take you seriously… well, at least they do more frequently.

Lately, the reminders are more like those horror movie trailers you get for the new horror genre’s offerings: subtle hints, dark settings, building tension and then BAM!  The creeptastic blip of ohmygodthehellwasthat?  Therefore, I’ve put a moratorium on this asshattery until further notice.  I fully expect, therefore, that I will no longer need to endure the following:

Waking up to Rice Krispies.  I roll out of bed, and my knees make a sound oddly identical to that snap-crackle-pop your cereal makes.  Shambling toward my alarm clock, I get dual Fourth of July firecracker strings, one from each foot, as the joints from the ankles downward give up whatever loudness they’ve hoarded since last night.  Happy Chinese New Year.  Yeah, and then the hips and back join in up the block.  I’m calling the cops.

Stupid, persistent fatigue.  This weekend I got all ambitious and turned my mulch pile.  It had been ignored for a year, and well, it’s not gonna turn itself, right?  Happy mulch = aerated mulch.  Two days later, I can still barely walk because apparently the muscles I use at my douchey desk job aren’t the same ones involved in spade work or repetitive shoveling.

Decreased capacity.  No, not that you sick, dirty, fucks.  That still works, I’m pretty sure.  Anyway, I’m talking about casually starting a run, and then getting warmed up.  After that, I have to back off to a violent walk.  My lungs complain, burn and the sensation of mortal distress emanates from my heart outward until it reaches my knees.  Thirty minutes later, I’ve completed my ‘run’ like a bag of hammers and coated the treadmill in a layer of sweat and phlegm.  Yeah, sorry about that.  Time was, I could ask you to pick a number between 15 and 20, I’d run that many miles in a row at a 6:30 pace and ask you for another number.  Now gym attendants come to try and push me back into the water and hold a mirror under my nose, the young and snippy fucklets.

Migratory hair.  I am bald and proud, because being mistaken for Dave Draiman is just awesomesauce.  However, the unintended consequence of evicting my hair from my melon apparently is low-rent squatting elsewhere.  Apparently, the hair decided that it would move south, barging in and taking up unauthorized residence in my ears and nose.  I’ve retailiated by systematically yanking the little fuckers out by the roots until my eyes tear themselves dry, but they persist like herpes… or so I’m told about its persistence.  Any incursion into the Back Territories will mean war.

Intake restrictions.  I noticed in Afghanistan that suddenly I couldn’t eat certain foods because I’d suffer volcanic, dragon-fire-breath heartburn.  I got the hint after the fifth time oatmeal and bottled water came back on me.  I’ve improved somewhat but now the list of Do Not Eat includes: strawberries, raw onion, the dessicator packets in snack foods, tomato sauce in large amounts, bananas, Albanian midgets, gluten from Ohio, and Smart Cars.  If chiles, meat and chocolate make it to this list, I’m going to spread a tarp in the backyard and suck-start my pistol.

I’m only 44 years old, being born at the tail end of the Sixties.  The cars America built in the Sixties are still out on the road and doing just fine, so why not me?  I’m self-repairable but made from equally-fabulous American stuff.  WTF?

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Go see other Suckage: Why Birthdays Suck!