Aging Grossfully

I keep running across the phrase “aging gracefully” in magazines and posts for us sweetly ripened folks. But isn’t the naked truth that we’re more likely aging grossfully, regardless of how hard we try to gloss over the wrinkles of memory dullness, wit dullness, intellectual dullness, and physical dullness?

Let’s face it, my sweetly ripened friends, we just aren’t as sharp as we used to be.

Case in point #1: I was recently thrilled to attend my 51st high school reunion luncheon in my hometown. I adore those old geezers (who are my exact age!) and was delighted to be seeing them again. After the 50th class reunion, ya really gotta have them every year because classmates are dropping like flies at a HOT SHOT convention.

I bought a new outfit to make a good impression and might have even styled a little. Hooboy, I thought I was looking about as good as it gets. Jack Nicholson would be proud.

So when I walked through the door of the restaurant, I was totally hornswoggled to glance down and find that I was wearing two different shoes. I froze in horror.

No. No. NOOOOO!! That’s what old people do, not those of us to whom hope springs eternal and age is just an annoying number!

But what I had going for me was that at least the shoes were the same color and everybody there had failing vision so nobody even noticed my mismatched faux pas. I don’t think anyone took the balance-check chance to risk looking all the way down to the ground. I probably could have worn diving flippers and no one would’ve been the wiser.

Case in point #2: (*disclaimer: If you have delicate sensibilities, you might want to skip this one – it’s truly puts the “gross” in aging grossfully.) The other night, Spouse approached me with a glass half-filled with water and a weird look on his face.

“Check this out,” he said, holding the glass out to me. “This is the glass I keep on my bedside table to take my nighttime pill. Put on your glasses and tell me, what do you see?”

I naively stared down into the glass and was startled to see a dozen or so tiny black dots floating in the bottom of the glass. Then one moved. Then another. Soon the dang dots were all wiggling around in there, swimming crazily like the larvae they were.

“What in the world?” I exclaimed, jumping up so sharply I nearly knocked the glass out of his hand. But then I knew.

I knew why for the past two months we’d been having mosquito problems inside the house. I knew why mosquitoes had been dive bombing me in bed at night and buzzing my ears while I was trying to put on makeup. I knew why no matter how many rabid whining mosquitoes I swatted in my closet, there always seems to be ten more taking their place.

It was because we were growing our own.

Chuck’s water glass had become an incubator for our own herd of prize-winning mosquitoes. Without considering scientific consequences, he’d left the glass there for the previous eight weeks uncovered and never drained the glass when he took his pill, only gulped down a swallow off the top, leaving undisturbed whatever was in the bottom (which he couldn’t see without his glasses but had removed for bed). Then he simply refilled the glass.

I wondered how many mosquitos in various stages of development he had inadvertently digested. Ewww.

It was the perfect storm. A perfectly gross storm.

So there you have it. Two case points proving that many of us age more grossfully than gracefully.  How about you? Have you a case point of your own you’d like to submit for our amusement, dear BFF?

 

P.S. I hope to see those of you in the Tampa area Saturday night (7/18, 7 pm) at the BayLife Church Women’s Christmas in July Event (it’s free and will be LOADS of fun!) – I’ll be bringing a message from my newest release, Bless Your Heart. I’m booking now for fall and Christmas so if you have an upcoming event for which you need a speaker that’ll bless their hearts, please contact me. Many thanks!