is it just me?

This much is true: getting old sucks. I do not know this from personal experience, as I am still young. But from everything I can see, it does not look too great.

Yesterday at work I had to go to a retirement party. The lady who is leaving is 72 years old. She has been a secretary in this department for something like 28 years. If I am reitirng form a secretarial position at 72 I will be really pissed. In any case, despite the ice cream (which was qualified in the email invite as "free") it was miserable. The truth is, no one cares that she's leaving. And retirement parties for people who haven't accomplished that much are particularly bad. The most they could say about her was that she did a good job overseeing the re-decoration of our building some time in the 1980s. Seriously. That was all they had. And if you saw my building you would realize that's even less than it sounds like. Apparently she took the job because the guy had a nice typewriter. That was 30 years ago. Then, like any other retirement party we have here we had to have a long recap of how technology has changed (for some reason they're obsessed with this). The retiree ended this by saying "and then computers were here to stay". Mercy. Since I am staff they asked me to contribute to her gift. I have never worked with this woman a day in my life, I feel sure she doesn't know my name, yet I am supposed to give $10 for her quilting store gift certificate? Honestly. It made me want to poke my eyes out.

I had already spent the afternoon thinking about how I don't want to get old. And then I got home to find this month's Mayo Clinic Health Letter in my mailbox. Now, this is not something I would subscribe to on my own. My husband's grandma bought me a subscription to that and Smithsonian magazine for Christmas. This combination has succeeded on getting me on every old person's mailing list known to man. I get offers for hearing aids, craftmatic beds, "european tour vacations", and wide variety of other things I don't want. Anyway, the health letter really doesn't have too much information that is of use to me. But yesterday's issue was particularly distressing.

The front page story was "Heart Attack: Get Help Without Delay". Hopefully this was not a news flash. Then there was an inside story on anesthesia options. The first sentences: "You'll soon have hip surgery. Because you previously had a heart attachk, your doctor is concerned, and wants you to meet ith an anesthesia specialist to review your health status." Basically, your heart is shot, your bones are giving out and we're afraid surgery could kill you. But what else is new? Then there was a box about exercising with arthritis. Then, on page 6 I see an article titled "Marital trouble". Now, I am not experiencing any marital trouble, but it seemed a bit more relevant than angioplasty and arthritis. First sentences: "The TV is blaring. Telling your husband to turn the volume down and get his hearing checked just sets off the same old argument. He knows his hearing is bad, but he doesn't want to get a hearing aid. And, he says, he'd just as soon not hear your nagging anyway." I am not kidding. That is a direct quote. Please just kill me now. And then, if it wasn't bad enough, in the box in the marital article there were some Signs of Respect to help your relationship, the second being: "Being grateful for each day you have together." In other words, don't be mean today because you could be dead tomorrow. The day I read the Mayo Clinic Health Letter and three or more articles relate to me, I will sign that living will and request to move on. Because obviously it's all a steep, fast downhill from there.

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To give credit where due, the title of this post is from a Todd Snider song. The song starts "I am an old timer, too late to die young now." It's a great song, as are many todd snider songs. If you've never heard em you should. I guarantee you'll laugh.