Ever since having breached the 30-year mark, I’ve found myself pondering when the days would come in which I would begin to feel “old.” Having been 35-years-old for a few months now, I can confidently say that at 35-years-old is the age at which I have found myself feeling old.
I will begin with the peak of the recent crescendo, which, in my old age, I will refer to as “yesterday.” I set out on a walk alone to get the mail. My 5-year-old daughter was quickly behind me. Half-way to the mailboxes, she decided to run up ahead of me. I decided to chase after her. It was after jogging a couple more than a few paces that I felt a numbing pain along the entire right side of my spine. I’d already expected my body to quickly respond with a, “HEY! What do you think you’re doing here?!” as my knees and hips adjusted to the increase in RPM, but given other recent physically-exerting experiences, I expected my body to quickly acclimate. But, it didn’t. I kept my pace to catch up to my daughter while maintaining some semblance of graceful jogging only to find that I had to constantly adjust and contort my upper body to alleviate the the spasms in my back. I slowed back down to a walk and watched as my daughter carelessly and gracefully kept sprinting along ahead of me. It was at that moment that I thought, “I’m getting old.”
I haven’t tried running or jogging today to test yesterday’s results for fear that I’ll lose complete bowel control or be stricken with spontaneous cataracts.
Speaking of bowels — it wasn’t until I turned 35 that I’ve found myself in the bathroom thinking, “one of these days I’m going to have a really good poop that just cures all of those ailments that I’m too scared to be tested for; Things like early-onset prostate cancer, high cholesterol, low bone density and forgetting where I left my coffee mug.”
It wasn’t until I turned 35-years-old that I feel that I’ve experienced indirect age discrimination. While I was unemployed last year, many of the responses I received after having submitted my resume for a job was that I was “overqualified,” which is a clear indication that I wear my pants too high and don’t understand how to use Twitter. And in recent months I’ve found myself referring to colleagues and coworkers as “the kids.”
When my hair started thinning in my twenties, the cute little girl who was cutting my hair might’ve said with an enthusiastic smile, “you know, we could get you some Rogaine and get this all fixed up for you!” Now she doesn’t even bother, and she trims my ear hair without even asking. And what’s worse is I now have to trim my own ear hair between haircuts.
I’ve always been inherently moody, but now I’m just downright crotchety. I’m always yelling at someone for leaving a door open or the water running, or at squirrels for eating all the damn bird seed. My wife was the one who first called me “crotchety,” and she knows me better than anyone, so I guess that makes me crotchety.
Old and crotchety.