Not Old

I’m not old, but I’m beginning to have the symptoms of an old person. I don’t mean I’m not biologically getting up there. I mean in my sense of myself, which I’ve had after all for my entire existence, I’m far from old and it’s a mystery to me what all these weird little difficulties are all about.

Eerie things are happening. I am mistaking one letter for another lately. It occasionally creates interesting confusion, like when I read that Robert Novak hadn't spoken to the press about the Valerie Plame matter since his 2006 interview in Jane. Interesting that he gave an interview to Jane magazine, I thought millisecondly, before my eye sped back to read it was June, June when he’d given the interview.

This kind of mix-up seems like a travail of the elderly, yet I’m not old. I’m just getting up there. Another sign is the age of men who are eying me on the street. For several years I’ve had to swallow the bitter pill that I no longer catch the eye of the really youthful men, the ones with the cute, youthful girlfriends who are effortlessly slim, the way I used to be and really haven’t not been for all that long. But I’ve started noticing extremely aged men giving me the once-over and I don’t like it at all. I don’t mean ‘older,’ I mean old. With red-rimmed, rheumy eyes and trembling hands gripping the heads of canes. My God! How dare they? Why would a young thing like me even consider the advances of one of these doddering old gits? It’s cruel to be harsh about a group I will someday join, and by someday I mean, you know, an immeasurable distance away, but it’s very destabilizing to my self-concept when these geezers start putting out the vibe on me.

But other weird things are happening. I can’t hear anymore either. I often watch someone talking and think, ‘Why are you muttering? Do you imagine I can hear a word if you talk like that?’ and I frown at the speaker, hoping they’ll get the message. But they don’t, so I’ll break in, “Speak up, will you?” or sometimes even, yes, I actually have done this, I cup my hand behind my ear to signal “Louder!” I mean, that's an old-person thing, right? Yet I’m not old. Still, there’s this peculiar confluence of experiences that’s becoming a bit hard to account for.

At night, after dinner, I have a weird feeling. I haven’t really done much of anything, just eaten dinner and watched a bit of TV, and suddenly I’m so tired I feel like going to bed and sleeping all night. And I mean sleeping – not reading in bed, not surfing the net. Just turning out the light and hitting the pillows.

Or I’ll be in the city, with friends or on my own, looking for diversion or dinner or a drink, and suddenly I’ll want nothing more than to be on my way home where I’ll get straight into bed and sleep all night.

I keep waiting for this phase to end, but it isn’t, and neither is the can’t-go-out-on-weeknights phase, which is becoming iron-clad. Once the idea of traveling to a rock show and standing for hours in a crowded club was a tedious prospect – now it’s unthinkable. I mean, why would I? And why did I ever? What could ever be better than sitting on the couch watching TV?

I'm not at the hot milk stage or anything. God no. It's warm, that's all. Warm milk, with a drop of rosewater. Mm.