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The Tea Maker
I was going to use larger text in this story but then I thought, fuck it! No one will ever read it anyway, so why bother? You’ll notice that my title this week is Getting Older and not Getting Old. There’s a big difference because I’ve always believed that being old was being twenty years older than I actually was.
Despite our best efforts we are all getting older and with it comes all sorts of weird and wonderful things such as aching joints and a deep concern about weight gain. So you join the gym but never actually visit the place, because your life experience tells you it won’t work so why waste time and money when you could be sitting at home with a Scotch. By choosing the relaxation option, you have time to ponder the only effective approach to weight gain – hard labour and starvation. Neither one works on its own and just saying “hard labour and starvation” in a single sentence is enough to make you think of, and graciously accept, another Scotch.
Bad news for the older person also includes things like heart attacks and high cholesterol levels but, hey, they’ve got medicines like Lipitor to unclog the tubes and get your cholesterol levels down to something manageable like 300.
Another thing is that no one over the age of 40 would ever dream of wasting money on a treadmill, but if you notice one in someone else’s house, you can’t resist the temptation. You’ll always have a go, just to prove that you can increase all the settings to maximum and still survive for at least 60 seconds at 200mph, despite your years.
Medicines, coupled to ridiculous levels of exercise and bland food, are to blame for our problems in later years. We work our bodies to breaking point, stuff ourselves with high-fibre rubbish and devour inordinate amounts of medicinal mixes. Then we sit back and wonder why we’re not dying but feel as if we should be.
I don’t have heart problems or high blood pressure unless Senior Management goes shopping. I can still go to the toilet unaccompanied. I can just about read the text on my large-screen computer if I wear my specs over the top of my contact lenses, and I can still hear Senior Management speaking to me, except on those occasions when she waits until I leave the room before she starts talking. I can still drive myself to see the doctor and, when I can’t, they’ll give me a bus pass.
Ok, so I still find weird bruises on my body and can’t remember how they got there and I do occasionally suffer from pains in my knees, hips, lower back, upper back and neck. Some people have also referred to me as a complete pain in the ass – but these people tend to be airport workers and council employees and they don’t really count. I agree that I’m becoming more cranky with every added year but that’s the really great thing about aging – you don’t give a fuck.
What does worry me is dementia and things like Alzheimer’s. It’s not catching these diseases that worry me, it’s the American Alzheimer’s Association checklist of common symptoms to help families spot the warning signs:
Recent memory loss that affect job skills.
Sometimes I can’t even remember what day of the week it is and whether I should actually be working or not. If I decide to work, I can’t remember what I should be working on and, if I do remember, I sometimes have to sit and stare at the job until I figure out a way to tackle it without ripping it up and tossing it in the nearest bin.
Difficulty performing familiar tasks.
I have a great deal of difficulty here. Familiar tasks usually equate to boring tasks so is it any wonder why I have difficulty?
Problems with language.
They don’t say whether they’re referring to normal, everyday language or to bad language. I don’t normally have difficulty with either, although I can use bad language in some inappropriate places (like airport check-ins).
Disorientation as to time and place.
When we first moved to the house where we now live, it took me around 3 months to stop going home to our old place. How I got there, I’ll never know.
Poor or decreased judgment.
This is an everyday problem for me but my family tend to ignore it these days.
Problems with abstract thinking.
What’s abstract thinking?
Misplacing things.
If they mean things like car keys, specs, certain items of clothing or the occasional grandson, I’m in trouble.
Changes in mood or behaviour.
I can be the happiest guy in the world, carefree and totally relaxed. Then Senior Management returns from her shopping expedition. Of course my mood and behaviour changes.
Changes in personality.
See above.
Loss of initiative.
I didn’t even want to write this until Senior Management forced me to get off my lazy arse and do something. Does that count as loss of initiative?
Anyway, if everyone followed this set of guidelines, our doctors’ surgeries would be reporting an epidemic. But we’re not. Instead, we’re all sitting in front of our computers, Scotch in hand, reading the Dorset Eye and waiting for someone to come up with a cure for whatever it is we’re all suffering from.
Personally, I don’t know what I’m suffering from but I do know it needs curing.
The Tea Maker
PS: You can comment on this story by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll respond to your emails in next week’s column. Your email address will never be published.
