A Little Chat About Dropping Off

A Little Chat About Dropping Off

There are a lot of things about getting old that are difficult. Most of us old folks realized we were old when we woke up one morning and looked in the mirror and said, “Oh, My Gosh! Is that really me?”

A friend who dropped off (unexpectedly) a few years ago had a webcam before they were ubiquitous. He said one day he turned on his computer and forgot his webcam was hooked up and jumped out of his chair in fright when he saw a withered-up old codger looking back at him from the computer screen. It was him.

Most of us never thought we would be old, and now look at us. I would rather you didn’t.  The young don’t even know we exist. Hah! I was young once, and I never thought I’d be old. I thought 30 was long enough to live when I was 15. My teachers, who were in their 30s and 40s, looked like old shriveled prunes to me.

Now look at me…Actually, I would prefer you not.

If you’re an old coot like me, then you know what I mean when I say you only age on the outside, while the inside stays the same. You wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and see a 77-year-old ‘you’ staring back. That’s what it’s like being old and hobbling around with a cane. Though you’re old, the young person inside is still you. You haven’t changed your sense of self.

Sometimes you think you can still do the things you used to do until you try to do them. And the world does not see the me inside, it just sees an old coot hobbling down the street trying not to fall down. I still try to hobble fast, but if anyone looked at me, they’d turn away because no one likes to watch old people do anything.

And sometimes I get deeply annoyed when trying to put on my socks or bending over to pick up something I dropped on the floor. But what really irks me about getting old is not being young anymore. It’s Nature’s cruelest trick, and you don’t find out about it until you get there. And by that time, it’s too late to do anything about it. You may have acquired a lot of wisdom along the way, but that’s about all.

No one wants to hear my wisdom. I am just an old curmudgeon.

When you’re old, no one takes you seriously. You get a lot of uh-huh’s and head nodding. You’re not the life of the party, that’s for sure. And even when you do get invited to a family gathering, all the young folks kind of ignore you after giving you a cursory pity greeting. I guess they think they have to.

If your family doesn’t live close by, and you have to drive an hour or two to see them, it’s a challenge. Driving at night drives me crazy, and trying to attend a Christmas Eve celebration almost certainly entails night-driving.

I can’t see the way I used to, no matter my competent and caring eye doctor. Why can’t people drive to see me? I’ll tell you why. Because I live in an outdated, non-open-floor-plan house, which, my gosh, still has wallpaper.  No doubt it smells like old people. And according to young scientists, old people do have an odor. It’s called the “old-people-smell”. See, you doubt me, don’t you? Why, because I’m old! But take a look at what Scientific American has to say. Read this.

People in auto repair shops think I’m stupid. I just had a starter replaced on my 14-year-old car (136,600 miles). One guy said it would cost “around” $800. But I’m a slick old coot… I used AI to find the average cost to replace a starter on my make/model/year of car in my area was $375 to $550. Armed with this info from AI, I got my starter replaced for $425. Just because I’m old does not mean I’m stupid. I know how to use computers as well as ChatGPT and Gemini.  Most young hooligan slicksters don’t count on that when they see this old shriveled coot walk up to the counter.

And then there are all the people dropping off all around you. An old friend of mine called death “dropping off,” and I rather like that term. It’s not as morbid or as final-sounding as “he dropped dead” or as euphemistic as “she passed on”.  It sounds so much better to say…” Did you hear that Ralph dropped off on Tuesday? Poor Ralph.”

Family members, friends, and acquaintances drop off all around you all the time. My grandparents, parents, parents-in-law, my sister, two brothers-in-law, my cousins, three of my best friends, and a lot of people I grew up with, worked with, or were acquainted with have all dropped off.

And all of that cuts deep because I know I ain’t gonna live forever. I am going to drop off sometime, sooner or later (and don’t you dare say it!), and so are you. I just don’t know when. I don’t want to know when either. I want to wallow and hobble around in blessed ignorance.

I will admit, though, that this dropping off stuff does bother me a bit. I’ve been known to remind people that at my age, I might drop off at any moment. My kids don’t like to hear it, but it is a fact.

OK. I’ve got work to do, and I have to go to the grocery store for cat litter and paper plates. See? I still have a purpose in life, and I won’t think about dropping off anymore (today).

But I bet you will.