‘A shopping cart is not just a shopping cart,’ and other observations of old age
As you age, events and items you use take on different meanings or have different uses.
Sometimes a shopping cart is not just a shopping cart. As you age, that cart morphs from a handy place to plunk the baby down and entertain the small kids to something more valuable. As you hobble around the store, your cart is your crutch or your walker, depending on how far you have slipped physically.
Sure, you can use the driving carts, but you won’t be able to reach much on the shelves and the refrigerated glass cases with the swinging doors are a nightmare. Plus, I’m always afraid I will run over someone. Actually, I am more likely to bang into the partitions between the checkout lanes.
So many things change as you age. Far and away, my largest grocery expense is protein shakes, and they also continue to go up in price. Where I used to say I was being nickeled and dimed to death, now I use $5 and $10.
The most stimulation I get is when I hear someone talking about cutting Social Security. That gets the old heart racing quicker than any amount of time on the exercise bike.
I can tell where we are in the month by whether or not the Social Security check has been deposited. Also by the date when the electric company will demand most of that check.
I tell the day of the week by my pillbox, morning and evening. Filling that pillbox takes most of a day. Usually a different day each week, depending on what I have forgotten to take.
When you go to urgent care, they immediately send you on to the emergency room. When you go to the emergency room, they automatically put you in a bed. Even when you are taking someone else, they still automatically offer you a wheelchair.
It gets harder to remember how long you have worn the same shirt, especially if some of your shirts are the same color or nearly the same color.
You’re from the last century. You realize that, amazingly, we seem to have spent a quarter of a century already. Where did it go?
When Mick Jagger sings, ”Time is on my side,” you know it no longer is.
When the weather forecasters talk about who should probably be staying indoors in these kind of conditions they are talking to you.
When you type on your computer, and it automatically underlines mistakes in red, it looks like the computer screen is bleeding. Heavily, too.
It takes longer to explain the circumstances behind your old stories than it does to tell the stories.
You realize that it doesn’t matter because everyone is looking at their phone anyway. You would be too, if you hadn’t forgotten to charge it.
Old age is interesting.
