Thursday, December 15, 2011

Old? Who are you calling old?!

I've been kicking this topic around in my head for a couple of weeks ever since I went to my dermatologist and he asked how I was doing. When I told him I only felt like I was operating at 50 percent capacity he said, "Well, isn't that how the elderly say they feel?" I don't think my brain was firing on all synapses that day, or I would have asked him point blank: "Are you trying to tell me I am old?"

Ask any old person and they will say that you are only as old as you feel. Even my soon-to-be 89-year-old mother wonders how she came to look so old but still feels so young at heart.

So today, I was asked to fill out some forms at the doctor's office and the first one was titled, "Geriatric Depression Scale," or something like that. I'll admit, I got a bit rankled when I saw the word "geriatric." I didn't think I was depressed when I walked through the door, but I sure as heck was when I saw that.

To make matters worse, when the nurse was placing the thingies on my body for my EKG, she said, "Lift your left breast, please."

"Oh, sure. No problem. Can you roll a forklift in?" I thought in the little bubble over my head. I then began to laugh uncontrollably.

The nurse smiled and said, "I'm sorry, it took me a long time to learn how to say that without laughing, but we aren't allowed to touch certain body parts."

I told her that coming right after the Geriatric Depression Scale that her request had struck me as funny. Hell, I was elderly two weeks ago, then downright geriatric, and now I was being asked to hoist my breast over my shoulder like the proverbial continental soldier.

When did this metamorphosis from young babe to old hag happen anyway?

The other evening, my gal pal Silvia called me from Las Vegas and bemoaned the fact she had recently celebrated her 65th birthday. Silvia once lived in Hollywood and managed rock stars. She's hip and cooler than cool still. "When did I get this old and not know it?" she wailed.

I empathized with her plight. It seems I, too, have gotten old and everybody knows it except me.

I have always looked younger than my years, which I attribute to a lifetime of fairly clean living. No cigarette has ever touched these lips and I only drink occasionally. I've never been a druggie either and I rarely eat meat and ingest my fair share of soy. In fact, twenty-somethings hit on me on a regular basis. I guess they don't see what the doctors see.

There are days when I feel my age and I do take advantage of my senior discounts because I have earned them, I will admit. But I like to think that I am still hip and cool and hang with a hip and cool crowd, even if we are getting to be a bunch of old farts.

So there!