Stuff That I Have Noticed #33 – Codgerhood …
… is a condition that we both dread and welcome. We welcome this state when the alternative is… well you know. Maybe it’s bold of me to use the collective pronoun. I have done no research, read no scholarly papers nor consulted any experts. Yet I AM an expert having reluctantly yet happily achieved that level of seniority. I recently commented that I used to seek the guidance of my elders but now I look around and can find hardly any. In my circle of friends and associates there are only three I can think of and all but one only has one ot two years on me.
While the term “elderly” has (for me) always carried the implication of weakness or senility, the word “Elder” has a positive connotation. In primary cultures an Elder is a person of advanced years who is respected and revered for the simple act of having lived longer – thereby having learned more – than the other members of her or his tribe. The wisdom and expertise of Elders is respected and sought and usually followed. They have been-there-done-that therefore they know more about that thing than the younger generations. Why should it be otherwise?
But largely in our current “culture” this is rarely the case. “Joe Biden is too old to be elected president.” Really? He’s seven years my junior and I still have all my marbles. Whether or not you like his politics you cannot deny that the man has experience. He knows things. He knows people in high places all over the globe. Uncle Joe is an Elder.
This is not a political essay and I’m not advocating a political position. I’m simply pointing out that a person of long experience is what is needed today in this insane period. There are wise elders in both political parties yet we are living in a laboratory experiment of what happens when power is held by a person who has no political or even real executive experience and no idea of what the role of POTUS is supposed to be or even how the government is designed to work.
But I digress.
I reached the age of eighty-five last month and, due to the genetic material provided by my physically powerful and resilient mother, I am never believed when telling a new acquaintance my age. Not only that but my energy and physical abilities also gave the lie to my chronology. (Thanks again Mom!) But physical decline is inevitable and Lucy’s genes, a vigorous physical lifestyle and mental acuity cannot forever put the brakes on it. And I am just beginning to feel it.
Around fifteen years ago a guy I know from the Directors’ Guild (looking for a squash partner) asked me if I was an athlete. When I replied that I was in my younger days he said that if I was ever an athlete I still was, just an older one. That conversation brings me to this.
It’s been said that the most common cause of injury to old men is the belief that they are still young men. While there is much truth in that age adage, I’d like to refine it a bit. This phenomenon is not so much the belief that we are young but the memory of skills past.
We athletes have always had good balance, speed and strength. As we age beyond our prime – just as we learn that we need glasses for our waning eyesight and some of us hearing aids for weakening ears – the balance, speed and strength we remember in the very molecules of our musculature also begin to wane. I watch running backs drive through the “pit”, break left or right and outrun a linebacker. While never an NFL prospect, there was a time when I could do that and my mind thinks I could still do it but when the light changes and I’m in the middle of a crosswalk that burst of speed simply is not there anymore. It’s shocking. In my mind I’m still this guy
Author Ben Bryant College Fullback 1955
but my body is this guy.
Author Ben Bryant 2015
I remember balance, equilibrium; I could spot front and back somersaults on a trampoline, nail a one-and-a-half from a 10 meter platform. Now I’m afraid to try a back flip off a rock into my nephew’s pool and I’m very careful getting in and out of the shower. I seem to be devolving into a wimp!
No. Not a wimp, a man who is smart enough to recognize and honor his limitations.
Two characteristics I still retain; mental powers are at a peak and (surprisingly) my physical strength has not yet departed. I can still wrestle the fifty pound potted lemon tree out to the terrace in the spring and back to the living room in the fall.
But then I need a nap.
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