On Growing Old

by Martin Green

On Growing Old (approx 2,850 wds.)

On New Years Day eight years ago I was rearranging some phonograph records (remember them?) on the bottom shelf of a cupboard when I stood up I felt something pop behind my left knee. Nothing further happened and I forgot about it until the morning of Super Bowl Sunday when I woke up with an intense pain behind my left knee. I managed to get out of bed, staggered into the kitchen and took two aspirin. By the time of the game the pain was gone. Nothing happened for two weeks, then the pain recurred and then again after another two weeks. Whatever it was apparently had a two0week cycle.

I finally saw my HMO doctor, who referred me to a specialist.. After the usual wait I finally got an appointment with the specialist, who examined the knee and said I probably had a torn meniscus. At this stage of my life I was playing tennis three or four times a week so I assumed that tennis was the culprit. I had an MRI, unusual as the HMO didnt like doing expensive tests, and made an appointment to see the specialist after I returned from a Mexican Riveria cruise in about two weeks. We discussed the surgery needed. My primary concern was how soon I could get back to playing tennis.

I took a walking stick (not a cane, as I informed everyone) on the cruise and used it mainly to get up and down steps as my knee had stiffened up and I couldnt bend it. Because of this, I was given VIP treatment by the tourist guides on shore excursions, being escorted to the best seats at all events. When I returned and saw the specialist again, fully expecting to arrange for the surgery, he said that the MRI was inconclusive and that hed hold off on this. Could I get back to playing tennis? He told me I could. After my knee unstiffened I did, but found that I couldnt move as before, especially to my right and, to my great annoyance, to get to drop shots in front of me that I could easily handle before. I had promised myself that Id play tennis until I was 75 so went on for two more years, then I left the tennis club where Id played for over 40 years and more or less retired.

Other things happened to my body when I reached my seventies. I did have surgery, my first since I had my tonsils removed as a kid, for an enlarged prostate (not, Im glad to say, for prostate cancer). Then, a few years later, I had surgery for a hernia, probably another legacy from my tennis-playing. I had several bouts of dizziness, never satisfactorily explained. I began having dental problems. When I had to walk any distance, my knees, both of them, began to hurt. In short, I had grown old.

Theres a whole industry of jokes about getting old, most starting with, "You know youre old when The reader can supply his own example. It could be-when its a struggle to get out of your chair, or when youre favorite movies are being re-released in color, or when its harder for sexual harassment charges to stick, and so on to infinity. Many of these jokes are sexual in nature, such as: when going to bed means going to sleep. I knew I had become old when I stopped playing tennis. I might laugh at some of the jokes, but I wasnt happy about it. The most depressing thing about being old, to my mind, was that things werent going to get any better.. And as you kept on getting older, the worse things would get. When, right after I retired, I came down with tennis elbow I knew it would eventually go away. Now it would be all downhill.

Well, thats a gloomy prognosis, and if that was the whole story about growing old it would be easy just to retire to your bed and stay there. So, are there any good things about growing old? Well, for one, Im not working any more. This is not to say I hated working. I wasnt exactly thrilled with it either. It was just something that had to be done. Maybe Ill explore my thoughts about working in another essay. But lets get back to growing old. Since Im not working any more, I dont have to get up around six oclock every weekday morning, as I did for about 27 years while working for the State of California. I dont have to commute to my office downtown as I did all those years, first by bus, which was bad, then by bus and light rail, which was even worse. Im happy to say I havent ridden public transportation since stopping work, not in this country anyway..

Since I worked for the State, I had to put up with the inevitable consequences of any bureaucracy: fear of doing anything new, fear of rocking the boat, fear of offending someone higher up, fear of being blamed for something. And as with any bureaucracy, the people who advanced to managers were not those who were good at their work but those who devoted all of their time to politics. So you wound up having bosses who were idiots. Since everyone was fearful of blame, you had to deal with countless memos in which everyone tried to cover their asses. You also had to attend countless meetings in which nobody dared to make a decision. In fact, nothing could be done without going through layers of bureaucracy and by that time the problem had gone away or become too big to solve.

In the last 20 years (or since I retired) the commute has become worse, so has working for the State. As a retiree, I get my retirement check deposited in my bank every month. If I was still an active employee, Id have to worry about having my pay cut, about furloughs, freezes or even having my job cut out of the budget. Id also be accused of being the cause of the States bankruptcy because of my inflated retirement and health benefits. (Ha, ha if that were only so). If Id been in the private sector, Id have to be worried about being fired, or downsized, or whatever being axed is called nowadays. If axed, Id have to go through the process of getting unemployment insurance and then< if still jobless, worry about having it extended. (Has anyone compared the amount of money used to save the banks and auto companies and in general prop up Wall Street with the amount spent for unemployment insurance? Im willing to be Wall Street comes out way ahead)..

I could go on and on about the bad things left behind when you no longer have to work, but enough. I realize that these are all negative things you no longer are affected by when youve grown old. Lets see if there are any positive things. You dont have to worry about how you look any more. If youre bald, thats expected. If youre sagging in certain spots, thats also to be expected. Since youre not going to an office any more, you dont have to worry about what you wear any more. I no longer wear suits in fact, I no longer own a suit. I have a blazer I bought after retiring and at any event calling for "dressing up, such as a wedding, a funeral or a captains dinner on a cruise, I wear this. I own a few ties and sometimes I wear these. Other than that, I dress for comfort.

I noticed as I grew older that younger people tend to defer to you. Sometimes, on a train or bus overseas a young person will get up and offer me his (or her) seat. On airplanes, a young person will hoist my carry-on to the overhead baggage rack. When Im waiting for my suitcase to come along at one of those airport baggage things a young person will help me pull it off.

You also dont have to do most chores any more. When we moved to Sun City I left my lawn mower behind. I dont usually prune bushes, rake leaves, pull out weeds or do any of that outdoor stuff that goes along with having a house. I do still take out the garbage. You dont have to worry about never having learned to dance.

You get senior discounts. You can drive at non-commute times. You can go to movie matinees, although even those have become expensive and very few movies are worth going to nowadays. You can avoid crowded stores by shopping on weekdays. You can avoid crowded restaurants by doing the same, or by going at non-busy times such as ten oclock for a late breakfast or two for a late lunch. You can take naps in the afternoon. If youre bored you can pretend to be napping. You know you can tune out what most anyone around you is saying and not miss much.

When youve grown old youve been through a lot. In my case, the real Depression (as a kid), WWII, Korea (when I was drafted), the Cold War, , Viet Nam, a bunch of presidents from FDR to Obama (and weve had some doozies), stock market ups and downs, the current recession. The country has survived God knows how many messes and you know it will survive the current mess, also. Knowing this, you can watch the current parade of events with a certain detachment and not get too heated up about anything. In any case, you wont be around long enough for certain catastrophes, like when Social Security and Medicare go broke. You also know the so-called experts on anything are more often wrong than right. You know the so-called pundits of cable TV and talk radio dont know a damn thing.

Since youre an old guy you dont have to be up on all the latest gadgets. You dont have to know how to use a cell form or how to make a DVD player work. You dont have to know what an "app is. You dont have to check on your e-mails every few minutes. You know almost all of your e-mails are spam. You dont have to be polite to telemarketers, people who want you to donate money to something, politicians who want your vote. You dont necessarily have to be polite to anyone really as people will just figure youre an ornery old coot.

You know that most of those things that seemed so terribly important to you when you were young-meeting that girl, getting that date, getting into that group, landing that job, winning that game-werent that crucial in your life. Somehow, no matter what disappointments you had, you managed to survive, and here you are. In any case, all thats in the past and theres not much you can do about it now. You know that most things in your day-to-day life dont matter that much. If youre late for an appointment, so what. You can always re-schedule. If you forget something, someone will remind you. No matter what you do to pass the time-golf, tennis, billiards, table tennis, bocce balltheyre only games, and it doesnt matter how well you play them. Being able to play them is what counts. The same applies to walking and getting out of bed in the morning.

While writing this, I happened to read a review of a book on aging, which apparently took a dim view of the process. The reviewer directed readers, by way of contrast, to an essay on aging by the Roman orator Cicero. Needless to say, I looked it up and found it very interesting. Cicero cites four reasons why old age "appears to be unhappy. These are: (1) "it withdraws us from active pursuits (2) it makes the body weaker (3) "it deprives us of almost all physical pleasures and (4) its "not far removed from death.

In discussing (in some detail) my tennis experiences and eventual retirement, Ive touched on the second of these reasons. I dont know if my body was weaker. But it was unfortunately much slower. As for the "physical pleasures, Ive touched on some of these and have noted that many of the jokes about old age are of a sexual nature. Ill let Cicero, since he brought this up, respond, which he does by saying: "carnal pleasure hinders deliberation, is at war with reason, blindfolds the eyes of the mind, so to speak, and has no fellowship with virtue. Of course, Cicero wrote before Viagra, but I think hed say pretty much the same thing today.

As for old age being not far removed from death, this is all too true, but death could have come much sooner, as we know from reading the obituary column, and in a way the knowledge that time is growing shorter makes the remaining days that much more valuable. It also spurs us to do things we may have been putting off while were still able to do so. Death itself is a subject unto itself and I may someday get around to writing on essay on it. Meanwhile, I like what Cicero, way back in Caesars day, wrote about it: "For clearly death is negligible if it utterly annihilates the soul, or even desirable, if it conducts the soul to some place where it is to live forever.

I want to go back to Ciceros first reason, that old age withdraws us from active pursuits. He cites many instances, including his own very active life, to show that even back in Roman times this was not true. In our modern times, when people live longer and generally healthier lives, this is certainly not true. In fact, when people get old enough to retire from work, which was necessary to put food on the table for themselves and their families, many are then freed to pursue activities that are more pleasurable or that are really what they want to do.

In my own case, shortly after retiring from my State job, I started writing for an "alternative weekly newspaper in downtown Sacramento, the Suttertown News. This was a volunteer-type job, no pay. Then I also began writing for the Neighbors section of the Sacramento Bee, which did pay, at that time $50 an article. I did over 100 Neighbors pieces, then after my wife Beverly and I moved to Sun City Roseville I started writing for the monthly newspaper, the Sun Senior News, that went to both SCR and Sun City Lincoln Hills. The Suttertown News went out of business about three years after I started there and Neighbors has been merged, or submerged, into the Bee. Right now I do two monthly features for the Sun Senior News, "Observations and "Favorite Restaurants.

As Id become a writer (Suttertown News had given me a business card identifying me as such), I started writing short stories and to date have over 200 published, a few in "little and senior magazines, most in online magazines (ezines). Ive also self-published three collections of these stories, plus a longer work called "One Year in Retirement, and most recently a collection of ten years worth of "Observations. I also hope to put out a collection of my journalistic pieces, and a book containing the short stories published since my last collection, ditto for my "Observations, plus some essays, of which this is the first.

All of this is by way of establishing that Ive found an active pursuit that has lasted through the 20 years of my retirement and that I hope will last for as long as I can sit and type at my computer. A kind of parallel pursuit to writing I reading. Someone, probably more than that, has said that he didnt know of any writers who werent also great readers. Id say this is true. In any case, I like to read all kinds of books as Ive succeeded in growing old I can re-read books I liked when young. I can also read books appropriate to current interests, e.g., the essays of Montaigne before undertaking to write my own.

Finally, a good thing about growing old is that I now have time to reflect and so write these essays. Not surprisingly, I plan my second to be "On Writing and the one after that to be "On Reading. To conclude this essay Id like to go back to my old friend Cicero again and quote him saying: "Lifes race-course is fixed Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality so the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life. The maturity of old age each bears some of Natures fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.

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On Growing Old