I was so much older then....but I'm even older now

Who knew it was going to be today? I had always said that the day I walked around in shorts with black socks was the day that it would be time to put me in the retirement home. I thought with Elijah's birth I had bought a few more years, that keeping up with a toddler would somehow stop the aging process.

If I had been honest with myself I would have seen some of the warning signs. Hair sprouting wildly on my body everywhere but the top of my head. Cute 30-somethings saying how much I reminded them of their father. The fact that the only CDs I had bought the past few years were new releases of bands I had first heard in high school and college. (Of course, as Sarah pointed out, the idea of even buying CDs as opposed to downloading tunes shows how "out of it" I am.) Golfing with younger guys who, while complimenting me on a shot, used a voice I would have used years ago: the voice that may have said "nice shot," but really meant "let's tell the old guy how great it is he's even out here trying instead sitting at home drooling while watching "Dancing with the Stars." " Being out with Elijah and being told what a lovely grandchild I had.

But today was the day that I crossed the bridge to senility and couldn't get back. I had lost our iPod (without Sarah's prompting I still would be using a Walkman) at our gym, but was ecstatic when I found out that someone had turned one in and it appeared to be ours. When I got it a couple of days later (it was locked in a safe for the weekend) I tried to use it, but it wouldn't stay on. I took it home, looked at the manual and discovered that someone had locked it. I tried a variety of ways to unlock it, but none were successful. After reconfiguring it for the third time, and still having no success, I took it to the Apple store by my office.

When I explained to the employee (who looked all of 15) what had happened and how I couldn't get the iPod unlocked, he calmly looked at the bottom, pushed a switch, and presto, got it done. The conversation after this modern miracle went as follows:

"What did you do?"

"I moved the switch on the bottom to unlock. See, red means locked, green means unlocked. So I just pushed this switch here."

He said this to me with a look of pity that said, Old man, why don't you stick with one of those transistor radios with the single earplug and leave anything more modern than that to us.

I thanked him and left, happy that my iPod I thought was at first lost and then broken, was neither. I also knew that I would no doubt be the topic of conversation (ridicule?) for the employees that night -- the old guy who couldn't figure out how to use the button on the bottom of his iPod.

"Do you think he still has cassettes?"

"Cassettes? He probably has one of those 8-tracks my grandparents talk about."

Well, let them have their fun. While they're obsessing over the latest version of the iPhone, I will be working out to Bruce, the Stones, Bowie, the Beatles and any other golden oldie I have on my iPod that given day, making sure I have the strength and stamina to keep up with my 5-year-old bundle of energy.

The one who thinks his daddy can fix anything.

Time in a bottle

I'm sure he meant well.

After all, he was only trying to save me some money. Still, when the teenage boy at the checkout counter offers you the senior discount, "if you happen to be 55 or older, ma'am," well, it can really ruin a 42-year-old's day.

Granted, the roots have been looking a little gray lately. My kind husband was thoughtful enough to point that out recently, at which point I was thoughtful enough to point out to him that the reason I hadn't visited the salon was to save money. And this was BEFORE he managed to smash his car into not one, but TWO stationary objects in the span of one week.

I briefly considered actually having the damage repaired. Then I found out that said repairs would cost at least $2,000. Our insurance deductible is $500, and who knows what a claim would do to our premiums? Getting the gray out of those roots is a bit over $100, including the haircut. A bargain by comparison.

So guess who has to keep driving around in a banged-up car? Hint: Not me.

So now the gray has been brought under control, but I'm still stewing a bit over that checkout-line conversation.

Granted, there was more going on than the gray hair. It was past midnight, for one thing, and I was exhausted from a long night at work. So there was that dark-circles-under-the-eyes thing going on.

Plus, I was limping, as I have been for months now because of a knee injury I got by taking classes I wasn't in shape for at our nearby Very Large Upscale Health Club. Memberships there are not cheap -- and neither is the physical therapy and medical treatment I started getting for that knee, once I finally admitted that it wasn't going to heal on its own and perhaps needed professional attention.

That brought on yet another age-related comment that I could have done without. One of the physicians, at the end of my fourth visit for evaluation of this problem, informed me that 10 years ago, she would have simply recommended a program of specific exercises to strengthen the supporting muscles of me knee. But now, injections were the first line of treatment.

I took this to mean that a miracle drug had developed in the past 10 years, which would now work in tandem with physical therapy to speed healing. Then she added, "after all, this knee is now 42, not 32."

Oh.

I really don't know why such things annoy me so much. You'd think I'd have started getting used to this soon after Elijah's birth. He was just a few months old, and I was still having residual ligament pain from his birth, the first time someone asked Jeff and I if we were "the proud parents or the proud grandparents."

Ouch. There's a new kind of pain!

I eventually was able to laugh that one off, since I had been with Jeff at the time. And he is -- let's just be blunt here -- a baby boomer. Obviously, there are no spring chickens left among THAT demographic.

But the next time it happened, it was just me with Elijah, in a checkout line (what IS it about checkout people? Aren't they taught MANNERS?).

"Your grandson is such a cutie!" the store employee beamed. Elijah wasn't even a year old at that point, which means I was still 37. I told myself that Mr. Overly Friendly Checkout Guy must have thought I was one of those REALLY young grandparents. Yes, that's it! Like on "Oprah," where I once saw a show featuring a woman who became a grandmother at the ripe old age of 28. (No, that's not a typo.)

But then I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass of a display case, and I must admit, I could have done better that day. The baggy clothes, the hair, the aforementioned dark circles under the sleep-deprived eyes -- everything about me screamed "old."

Even more frightening, I was on my way to drop Elijah off with Jeff and head downtown to work, looking like something out of Night of the Living Dead. Real professional.

So, now that I might actually have to face being in the job market again (I'm still employed, but it's a tenuous employment at best), I have resolved to somehow look younger. Got the hair thing taken care of. I could stand to lose a few pounds, and I perhaps should try to project a little more pep.

Pep is really not my thing, but I'm determined to give it a try. Maybe I can buy it in a bottle.

I'll use my senior discount.