Saying Goodbye to Youth May 2012

The time has arrived – no, passed – for me to bid farewell to youth.  I  could write a book on the subject.  You won’t believe all the strange things that go on in this house.  There’s seldom a day passes that we don’t “lose” something.  On Saturday John came to me saying, “Do you know what I’ve done with my six-foot rule?”  Duh!!!  I didn’t have a clue, but we tried to remember when and where he last used it and sure enough he found just where he left it.  We put things up and think to ourselves, “I’ll remember where I put this,” but nine times out of ten that is not the case.

“You younger ladies have lots of surprises ahead of you,” was a remark Clyde Lowrey used to tell us.  And she was right! Remembering names is another of our short-comings.  We know a person’s name just as well as we know our own, but for the moment cannot remember it.  Maybe in the wee hours of the night the name comes to us.  I can remember things that happened many years ago better than I can remember what I ate for breakfast.

In years gone by I could just spit out the botanical name of numerous plants – today those words aren’t there and on top of that most times I can’t even give the plant a common name.  Of all the things I’ve lost I miss my mind the most.

There is an old southern term “hold out” — it has to do with tired.  Well, this ole gal can’t “hold out” to do diddly squat.  I never knew so many things could be done sitting down and I might as well laugh as cry about it.  I’m told it isn’t going to get any better. I read somewhere recently that “growing old is not upsetting, being perceived as old is.”  I don’t know about that.

I had never been more aware of being old than when we were in the grocery store last week.  I was pushing my four wheeler (the walker) and John was pushing the shopping cart, when a young mother pulled up beside us and started a conversation.  I couldn’t help but notice the difference in our shopping carts.

This young mother had all sorts of frozen dinners and fast foods, but we had a sack of potatoes, a cabbage head and bags of dried beans.  There was not one fast food item in our cart. She had a large quantity of baby food, while we had arthritis medicine, Double Strength Tylenol and prunes.  I didn’t notice denture cream in her cart either.  The crowning blow to all this was that I noticed she had diapers and we had Depends!!  Duh.  Then it dawned on me that even shopping carts can tell one a lot about the age of the shopper; however, this is also country living.