Bites

[rejectomorph]

I find myself growing more irritable as I age, and more physically irritable in particular. An ache here and a twinge there bother me more than they once did, and this increased irritability comes just when the aches and twinges grow more frequent. I also find that I need to have my eyes and teeth checked more often, and this happens just as my annoyance upon doing these things increases. Aging is all very good in theory, but in practise isn't particularly enjoyable. Most annoying, I think, is that various bits and pieces (yes, I'm talking about you, kidneys, knees, feet, stomach, lungs, pancreas, and certain vertebrae which shall remain unnumbered) are slacking off before my brain is done using them.

My brain thinks it perfectly reasonable to do things such as go for long walks, climb stairs, sit in one position operating a keyboard and staring at a monitor for hours, eat great slabs of pie, drink multiple bottles of beer, and all sorts of other things, without having a bunch of lesser body parts get all whiny and complain about how they're being abused. Not that the brain is doing so well, itself. It forgets a lot of things now, and then gets pissed off when the nose tells it that something is burning or the taste buds tell it that it left out an important ingredient. When confronted with its failure, it usually blames some unnamed blood vessel for bursting or constricting or something.

The brain is turning into a curmudgeon. Or maybe it was a curmudgeon all along, but always directed its curmudgeonly attitudes out toward the world, and I never noticed them until it decided to start criticizing me. Well, parts of me, at least. Right now, for example, my back is telling me to go do something else for a while, and my brain is all pissy because it wants to keep writing. The back is about two minutes from getting its way. As I said, aging is all very good in theory. You gain knowledge and experience and wisdom and all that, but you have to cut back on the ice cream. It's an unfair trade. The brain has finally gathered enough information to know what it wants, and now it has more to do, and then various body parts start falling apart, and you don't even get to eat half a cake as compensation, because your stupid kidneys would shut down. Aging bites.

Comments

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

How old ARE you, if it's not a secret? In the last few months I've become curious about the corporeal part of the people I read, shortly after posting one day that I wasn't certain of the gender of many of them. If you're a rather more anonymous sort, or an-age-ymous, quietly delete this comment and I will not be offended. :)

[rejectomorph]

I keep intending to update my user info page to include my year of birth, but never get around to it. Unless my memory is even worse than I think it is, the correct year is 1945. Yeah, that must be right, because one of my earliest memories is of having heard those rumors that circulated in the late 1940s of Hitler having secretly escaped Germany at the end of the war, and then wondering if I was going to see him on a bus or in a downtown crowd. I think I might have once embarrassed my mom by pointing to an overcoat-clad and fedora-wearing moustached stranger on a crowded 7th Street trolley, and asking if he was Hitler. But maybe I just imagined that event.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Well ok. I was born in 1973, I should say in return.
I'm certain I was allotted the ages between 20 and 30, as was everyone else, but I can't say where they went.

[niyabinghi.livejournal.com]

One thing that really gripes me about aging, is how, the older I get, the younger people under 30 look----they all look like teenagers suddenly.