THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506160205
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
As a regular reader of The Clipper (even the issues without my column) and a certified geezer, I was greatly interested in the recent article about all the organized activities available to senior citizens.
But it was all organized. And that left out my favorite activity - disorganized recliner sitting. I did not retire so that I could consult my crowded calendar every dawn and remind myself to be at a certain place at a certain time. I retired to escape schedules.
Don't get me wrong. I do not snipe, snicker or snort at seniors whose schedules are as crowded as a moose in a microwave. That's their thing. My thing is to leave as much open time in my life as possible. If I want to work in the yard, hand me the hoe and warn the weeds. If there's a new movie with Jamie Lee Curtis, grab your purse, Maw, and let's go. But don't worry about me and Jamie Lee. If I got within 10 feet of her, steam would erupt from my ears and they'd have to call the paramedics.
However, I make sure that there is plenty of time in my life for inertia. I'm not saying I have become the world's first bald, bearded vegetable. But recliner sitting when I feel like it is relaxing, rewarding and refreshing. Maybe I have a book in my hand. Or maybe I have the TV remote. Or maybe I am thinking Great Thoughts.
Like about how good my life is. I have been blessed with a happy career, a blissful marriage, children, grandchildren, friends and a succession of first-class dogs, plus one superb cat. The thought of retiring used to scare me. But I have discovered that there is a large streak of lazy lout in my makeup.
Retirement presupposes that I am getting old. That scares me, but you don't have much of a choice, do you? And I am discovering that ``old'' seems to be an undetermined place somewhere several years down the road. When I was 21, I remember thinking that 35 was old. Now that I am nearing 66, I am startled to see 35-year-olds out of training pants.
One of my latest Great Thought contemplations was adding up the pluses and minuses of getting old, older, oldest. Here's the way they added up:
Plus: The free time to indulge sudden whims like driving to the Shenandoah Valley because it is a sunny day.
Minus: The aches and twinges that warn you you ain't as young as you used to be.
Plus: The 10 percent-off senior citizen discount. But I remember how I resented it when I was only 50 and a teenage clerk figured I was entitled.
Minus: Those annoying minor memory lapses. ``Here I am in this room. I came in this room to do something or get something. Wotinheck was it?'' And please, Newt Gingrich, while you're trying to revamp America, pass a law that would put little I.D. tags on all the folks whose names are hiding somewhere in the back of my head.
Plus: For me and my wife, at least, the memory of childhoods sweeter, slower, far less pressured than those we see around us today. We didn't wear brand name clothes or sneakers priced in the three digits. When we played we used our imaginations, not the buttons on electronic gadgets. And sex was a mystery to be solved when we were grown up and married, not a casual tussle as soon as our hormones started sending signals.
Minus: The realization that even the oldest of us live within a time frame. I have friends in their 80s who are remarkable for their physical and mental energy. Yet, there will come, sooner than we wish, a moment to say goodbye. That is the basic down side of getting old. It becomes a time for saying goodbye.
Plus: But that same passage of time creates wonderful moments like the ones I experienced last weekend. I swapped cheerful insults with the in-laws who have been my dear family for more than 40 years. I watched a beautiful niece who is winning her fight against cancer ride a sleek horse looking like some kind of a cowgirl queen. I watched a niece I first met in 1951 as a giggling little girl feeding her new granddaughter.
I add up the pluses and minuses and come out way ahead. And I smile to myself as I think of that little girl-become-grandmother, and I remind myself that the cycle of life is endless and eternal. by CNB