Are You Old Enough To Know Better?
by Knight Pierce Hirst
I'm tired of hearing people complain about how old they are. It makes me wonder if wisdom really does come with age. Picasso thought it did. In his later years he wasn't allowed to be alone in an art gallery because he'd been discovered trying to improve one of his masterpieces.
Age used to be important to me. I could hardly wait to be six to go to school, thirteen to be a teenager, eighteen to be legal and twenty-one to be everything else. Now I'm at a point in my life when I think age is just a number - and like other numbers, I forget them.
I remember my mother referring to the guys I dated as young men. Now I'm referring to men under thirty as young men too. I don't know when my perspective changed. Maybe it was the same time men under thirty started calling me mam.
The longer I live, the shorter my memory gets. I go upstairs and forget why I went. Someone's name is on the tip of my tongue and that's where it stays. There are more post-its around the house than there ever were PTA notices. Thankfully, my husband understands. He puts his arm around me and says those three, little words I need to hear - write it down.
The older I get, the more I forget - which could be a symptom of SDS - Seventh Day Syndrome. If God hadn't rested on the seventh day, he could have changed a few things. We could have been born old and got younger every year. Instead of forgetting, we'd know more. In fact, we'd know more than our parents - which is what we thought.
The older I get, the faster time seems to pass. When I asked my grandmother if she thought this phenomenon was caused by a chemical change in the brain and if she experienced it too, she said she used to until she stopped wasting time worrying about it.
Now I walk errands instead of run them. I don't try to keep up with the Joneses or try to climb the social ladder because I'm rung out. I don't mind standing in line because it gives me time to remember what else I was meant to buy. The only lines I worry about are worry lines; and if I need to lift my spirits, I use my love handles.
KNIGHT PIERCE HIRST takes humorous looks at life.
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