A Vintage Life Lines from 2018.
You may not be old enough yet to have noticed it, but your conversation changes once you pass age 60. At that point you are going to begin saying things you’ve never said before.
Not that I would know anything about being over 60, of course, but I hear tell that after 59 you begin to utter things you never dreamed you would say. They’re the things old folks say, and that’s not you!
Once that 60th birthday passes, though, you’ve reached a whole new stage of life. It takes awhile to realize what happened, but you will begin to say things like this:
“Don’t forget my Senior Discount!” At first, it’s hard to realize that you now qualify for the old folks’ discount at the fast-food counter or the department store, even though you got your first warning when the AARP sent you a membership application on your 50th birthday. You thought that was a mistake, didn’t you? At 50 you were still calling yourself “middle aged” and still thinking you might pick up some tickets and head to the Widespread Panic concert.
The first time the order clerk shoved that cup of coffee at you and said, “Here’s your senior coffee,” you couldn’t imagine why she thought you qualified for it. You were insulted, weren’t you?
But a few years later that 10 or 20 percent off starts to look pretty good. You gradually changed your regular shopping day to Senior Discount Day.
It may take awhile longer, but your new Golden Years status may even prompt you to say, “Oh look! They’re having a sale on cemetery monuments! Why don’t we buy one and get it set up with our names on it, Hon? Then they’d just have to add the death dates, and the kids wouldn’t have to bother!”
Another reason your conversation changes is that your body slowly morphs into a new and foreign shape once you pass 60.
Your vision is one of the first things to go. You won’t know exactly when it happened, but all of a sudden you’re saying, “Photos of the grandkids? Wait! Let me get my glasses!”
Then, somewhere along the way, you’ll find yourself saying, “Just let me run to the bathroom one more time before we go.” New rule: a 60+ bladder won’t wait.
You’ll look in the mirror one day and ask, “Hon, have I always had more than one chin?”
You’ll be getting dressed and realize something: “Oh my gosh! My abdomen is not where I left it yesterday! It was up here yesterday and today it’s down here.” You’ll point with your finger, tracing a line from where you thought your abs were to where they’ve landed. Hopefully, you’ll be talking to yourself at this point. “Hon” doesn’t need to see this.
Listen to yourself when you’re shopping. You’ll hear a whole new category of comments and questions come out of your mouth when your 60th birthday is in your rearview mirror.
“I don’t care how ugly these shoes are. They’re comfortable. Wrap them up!” (I have not personally sunk to this low yet, but the day is coming.)
You may say, “Do those pants come larger than XL? I want the ones with the full elastic waist.”
If you look in a 3-way mirror in the dressing room, some of you women may make a sudden, horrifying discovery:
“What is all that hanging down back there? How did my mother’s arms get on my body?” followed by “Yikes! Put these sleeveless dresses back on the rack!”
While you’re struggling with the elastic waists and sleeveless tops, “Hon” will be over in the men’s department grumbling, “Why are they making these pants legs so tight?” and “Don’t you have a shirt long enough to go over my stomach?”
Of course, there are things you hope you aren’t saying after age 60:
Like, “Son, what do you mean you’re ‘moving back home’? “And bringing what? . . .Your biker chick girlfriend and her two kids??”
I hope you don’t have to say, “Man, now I wish I hadn’t taken all that money out of my retirement account and spent it on that boat!” Or asking, “Is it too late to start a retirement account at my age?” I can tell you, it is, unless you plan to retire at age 90.
Hopefully, at age 60+ you won’t say, “Only 25 more years, Dear, and we’ll have the house paid off.”
And you certainly don’t want to be the 60-pluser who says, “Doctor! How can I be pregnant? I’m 65 years old!”
I’ll confess that, young as I am, even I have uttered a few of these statements. But I draw the line at one I’ve heard friends say: “Hon, after lunch, why don’t we pop over to the funeral home, pick out our caskets and pre-pay for a nice send-off?”
Uh-un. That’s what your kid and his biker chick girlfriend are for.
