Aging: Getting Old Sucks

I'm 59 years old and my hair is getting thinner. I don't have to do that comb-over thing, but, sadly, I'm well aware of what it is.

I seem to be able to grow hair everywhere on my body… except where I want it to grow. It's a lot like my front lawn. The grass growing out of the concrete driveway is thicker than the grass in my yard. Go figure. You can plant a broome-stick in the ground here in Florida and it will be a small tree in less than a year.

Thank God for the "man groomer," which I utilize no less than twice a month. It's gotten so bad that I've gone to shaving the hair in my ears as often as those on my face. This is a terrible misappropriation of hormones, which, for the record, I would rather invest in other parts of the anatomy.

I have always been vertically challenged and now find myself in the chronologically challenged arena. My goal in life was to grow into my ears, but I'll never be that tall, so I've given up. Now my goals in life have changed; I'm thinking of investing in a prune farm.

I've determined that age is too high of a price to pay for maturity, which my readers suggest will never happen in my case. Getting older means you don't have to worry so much about temptation. You don't have to avoid it; it avoids you. Most women I know refuse to admit their age; most men I know don't act theirs.

I got ugly early, so that's never been an issue in my life. No one has ever confused me with a movie star. In 1981, I was mistaken for Bert Lance in the Atlanta Airport. Lance, a close advisor to President Jimmy Carter, got into hot water over some banking deal. Turns out the reporter thought I was Mr. Lance. My wife, who was accompanying me on the trip, went ballistic when she realized that I had taken on the Bert Lance-persona and was actually answering questions about the scandal. I've never been one to shy away from an interview, even if the fool interviewing me didn't have enough sense to ask my name.

And then there was the time that I was in the Delta Crown Room and then drug czar Bill Bennett swept in with his entourage. I don't know the man's name, but I suppose I have an amazing resemblance to some Colombian drug lord. Finally they released me but ran everyone out of the Crown Room so that Mr. Bennett could be secured.

So much for my various claims to fame. Why couldn't I look like Brad Pitt?

Anyway, getting old sucks. Since I procreated, I solved all my computer problems. My kids recently gave me an IPod, which I mistook for a transistor radio. Go figure.

Let the record reflect that I still go to the gym several times a week, but I've noticed that 90-pound girls are out-lifting me. My three sons are all into weightlifting. Jason even tried the make the US Olympic team and paid for his graduate work in molecular biology with a scholarship at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. That's where they train the Olympic athletes.

About the only time I got to do any lifting was when my kids took the weights off the bar and I would hop in and do some curls with the bar. They immediately uninvited me; guess I was slowing them down.

My wife was talking to her sister Janet on the phone recently. We were on the way out to eat to celebrate my 59th. "Yeah, he's getting old. Just passed 60!" I never corrected her because I actually forgot what age I really was.

Getting old sucks!