Growing Old

Everyday, I grow older...in time, manners, thoughts, and hopes. Age creeps over me like a diseased haze bent on revenge for opportunities wasted, ignored, or plain unrecognized in my free-wheeling days of youth. The fact that I actually have noticed this is testament to the susceptibility to glitches our touted fate actually is, as the plan is for one to remain impervious to the effects of age until their life source has waned beyond the point of rekindling. So, in my state of realization, I have decided to bring to the world ways that age has conspired- and might do worse in the future- to turn me into that which I have formerly despised.

To begin with, I have noticed that I now enjoy toasted bread slices. For decades, you could not get me to taste a slice of bread that had been hardened, but now I find soft bread to be as desirable as a black president...oh, wait, maybe not a good analogy (if that's what it is), but couldn't the fact that America now has a black president be a sign of aging? For decades...heck, centuries...Americans resisted the concept of any race producing its leader besides the Aryan race. Now, in age, we have seen it change course, much like my toast conversion.

Now, what else can happen? Let me see...I might turn racist, not against white people, but against black people. I might turn against women and meat, becoming a homosexual (or, nonsexual) vegetarian, unhappy with the world and reserved to lonely days and nights on a Greek island, with dreams of muscled Achilles chilling the loneliness slowly siphoning my life away.

Sounds bad, but it could be worse; I could despise books and knowledge, cling to religion while shunning guns, and declare anyone past a third grade education an over-educated hippie bent on reversing the course of nature by sidelining the influence of the holy book...which, as you might note, I choose to ignore as rage seethes within my blinded sights. You could blame me, if you want, but that blame would be misplaced as age is the real culprit. 

Age does weird things to you, such as kill you. I can guarantee you that you won't die younger, but you will die older, even if it's a few seconds older. As people realize they are one step closer to kicking the proverbial bucket, they tend to act irrationally, performing deeds they would have regarded as despicable in their early years. I don't blame those of us who've awakened to this realization; I blame those still blinded by the vigor of youth, strutting around like peacocks in heat, longing to take one from life and bear offspring relegating them to what they perceive to be the success line in the overcrowded soul refund line. If only they could see what will be revealed to them later on...what we now know...they wouldn't be dancing to the same tune, or at least not with the foolish grins on their faces...but such is the way of age, it rips your back side when you least expect it. Sadistic f*ck!!!

But, now I'm grappling with the tensions of age as it pulls my strings like an unstout Pinocchio. I know I'm easing into a period of contentment, when sitting on an expiring quay, hanging a line as old as time's breath over the side hoping to catch a meal to extend my experience by one more, unintentional day will be all that I loathe out of existence. That, too, will be an effect of age overdose. What else could one ascribe it to?

So, What then? What is to be done to combat the effects of age when one knows its inevitable victory? I leave the contemplating to greater minds than I possess.