1. You don't have to set your alarm clock anymore, unless you want to make sure you don't get up so early that your grandkids think you must have been a dairy farmer once.
2. You choose movies to watch that won't disturb your nap. British period movies are a special favorite, although you find anything with John Wayne or Maureen O'Hara in it to be soothing.
3. You have a favorite movie that you've never seen the end of. And that's part of the reason you like it so well.
4. You wear black knee socks with shorts - not because you think its fashionable, but because it hurts too much to bend over and take them off. I mean getting a pair of shorts on is tough enough. Who has the energy left to change your socks?
5. You drop things a lot less often, because it's too danged hard to get down on your knees to pick them back up again. Before picking anything up you look around for some kind of long-handled tool. If you haven't bought a grabber yet, you've had one in the shopping cart at least once but were too cheap to buy it.
6. You park out on the far side of the grocery store parking lot in order to (a) protect your car from dents caused by people parking next to you and (b) because the extra walk is part of your plan to get "back in shape".
7. Your memory is so far gone that you actually believe that you were once "in shape". Your stories about the days when you were in shape are the stuff of legend (or more accurately - mythology). Joseph Campbell once interviewed you for a book he was writing.
8. At least one day a month, you never get around to changing out of your pajamas. Either that or you slept in your clothes. Either that or you wear the same clothes all the time.
9. You realize that you are probably never going to get around to writing the Great American Novel and that not paying attention in high school English probably didn't hurt your career that much or if it did, you really don't care anymore.
10. You develop a sudden interest in the surgical arts - as practiced upon yourself and your friends. You find yourself discussing colonoscopies over meals at four-star restaurants.
The bad news is that it gets worse from here on. When someone suggests going to a monthly bingo game at 6:00 am down at the McDonald's in the Walmart Supercenter, and you think it "sounds like fun", you will have officially topped the hill and begun the long slide down into geezerdom.
The good news? You've lived long enough to become a problem for your children, which is sort of payback for all the misery they caused for you when they were kids. They'll be having that "meeting" down at the I-Hop one day soon to figure out what to do with you. You will not be invited and your suggestions will not be seriously considered.
Smile and go with it (but put in your dentures first; the gums are just not attractive, okay).
(c) 2004 by Tom King
