You Might Be Getting Older If...

SO... I've managed to get almost all the way to age 58 (barely over a month now) without ever having felt like I was as old as I actually was at any given time. In fact, I don't think I'd ever felt older than maybe late 20's, tops. Maybe this had to do with the fact that I've never been married or had children: I know that can age a person. But at any rate, here I was at almost 58 and still feeling maybe half that, when my pastor, who is three years older than me, mentioned what a big deal turning 60 was for him, and I suddenly realized FULLY for the first time that I'll be sixty only two birthdays after this one. Started remembering all the things I expected to have done and all the things I'd expected to have happened by the time I was FIFTY, and here I was nearly sixty and hardly any of them were reality, and at that age most likely weren't going to. (Way too many to mention here, but one of the big ones being that I've never managed to actually make a living by my writing.) So I knew I had to write about aging on Hubpages, but I didn't want to do that unless I could come up with a way to do it with a touch of humor. Then it finally came to me... the work of that great philosopher of the ages, Jeff Foxworthy, came to mind. So I now present a work that will hopefully be familiar and helpful to at least a few of my fellow oldsters...

YOU MIGHT BE GETTING OLDER IF...

You have to stop moving when you talk to people, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to hear you over the noise of your bones creaking.

Instead of "Good Cop/Bad Cop" it's "Good Knee/Bad Knee"

When someone is arriving at your front door to pick you up at noon, you have to get started heading toward the front door at 11:30 to make it there on time.

When an AARP staffer makes an incorrect statement about their policies, you can correct them because you're more familiar with their policies than they are.

Your favorite rock bands as a high school and college student are now literally exhibits in a museum.

A 20-something tries explaining some computer problem to you so simply it sounds like baby talk, and you STILL have no idea what he's talking about.

You think "downloading music" refers to a delivery truck dropping off a bunch of albums at a record store.

You think "Hip Hop" is a children's jump-rope game.

You can remember when people went to the library for BOOKS.

You think "Facebook" is a photo album.

You actually HAVE a Facebook page, but your "favorite quote" is "Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!"

The only time you've ever owned a wireless phone was that time your dog chewed up the cord.

You keep instinctively trying to flip CDs over to the "other side" half way through.

You think a web site is where a spider makes its nest.

Your first, best option for writing about aging in a humorous way is imitating Jeff Foxworthy.

Of course, I COULD have put something in here about how not ALL of these things are exactly true... at least yet... how I am, after all, on Hubpages and Facebook (and part of my "about me" is "I hope to never begin a sentence with the words KIDS THESE DAYS". Or how I never listen to oldies radio (I find it boring) but rather, mostly, the local "alternative" station called The Current. I might also have mentioned that the more serious consideration I give it, the more I find that some of those things that I'd hoped would happen that didn't don't really upset me all that much for having never happened, and others have had their compensations (like the fact that I might never make my living as a writer, but I've been able to use my writing to good effect on behalf of various social action groups I've been affiliated with). Or even that while there are still some aspects of turning 60 that bring me up short, it certainly isn't out of the question that by the time it finally happens, I might have even adjusted to it sufficiently that I'll actually welcome it the same way I did 40 and 50, and that I suspect the same may be true with many of my fellow "boomers" if they'd learn to look at the situation in the right way. Yes, I could have put all of that into this piece, but I won't, because I was determined that this piece had to be funny, and that stuff just would NOT be funny, so... what's that? You say I ALREADY... oh, damn!