Back to Zine cover
I always loved Frank Sinatra's song "When I Was Seventeen". I didn't particularly love Sinatra, but I loved the song. In recent years I've written song parodies of it for two of my kitties who had passed seventeen.
That memory prompted me (as almost anything can) to parody the song once again for the age I just passed, but I can't do it as a song parody now. You probably have to be younger or at least have something to say about the age that made it a "very good year". Seventeen isn't much to wax poetic about if you got married, had a baby, lived in a 27 foot cold-water trailer and learned to subsist on pinto beans. And never mind the second verse, for "twenty-one", if the babies and pinto beans were ongoing. Or the third verse for "thirty-five" if you had a houseful of teenagers and a high-pressure job. I forget how the song ended, but Sinatra wasn't as old as I am. For some of us, things only improve when we get older (with the possible exception of the pinto beans) and we wouldn't be young again for all the tea in China - or anything else they have. So let's fast-forward.
When I was 72, any day that I'd had chest pains, I made sure to take a shower so that if I had to go to the hospital for a heart attack, I'd be clean. It's sort of based on the old instructions of your mother when you were a child, which were to always wear clean underwear in case you got hit by a car. (Yes, they had cars back then.) I also determined to give up the causes of chest pains, which are mostly lifting, carrying, reaching and hot chile, but haven't done too well at that.
When I was 72, I discovered that most published books (i.e. those which are not by me) are now printed in faint gray text instead of black, and in some font that must be a 6 or 7. What is the matter with book publishers these days? Did they run out of black ink?
When I was 72, I started having to spend comparatively more money for smaller sizes of things like cat litter and potting soil that I could actually carry to the house or porch myself. Opening a giant bag of potting soil in the trunk of your car so you can shovel parts of it out into a wheelbarrow and move it makes a horrible mess. My shopping criteria became more "what does it weigh?" than "what does it cost?" I also appreciated, in passing, that I have a six pound cat and not a twenty pound cat when I take her to the vet.
When I was 72, I threw out my entire collection of decades-old note cards and stationery that nobody, including me, ever uses any more. I email what's left of my own generation, use that or the so-called phones we have now for my middle-aged offspring, and have grown grandchildren who don't know how to do anything but text on a cell phone or post in FaceBook. I'm not sure any of them even learned to write in school, except the one who's pushing thirty. They text in some abbreviated language I presume is textskrit, similar to the sanskrit of the ancient Egyptians. This is progress? (Of course I realize it may have been invented to keep grandparents from having any idea what they said.)
And I threw out a lot more, too, including large collections of glass bottles and jars, plastic jugs, pans too nasty to cook in, and twenty years of cat magazines. I contributed greatly to the city recycling center's reason for existence, but I do hope they've emptied their bins by now. Then I found an electronics recycling place and trundled a decade's worth of dead laptop, fried WebTV, sick printer, and several dead VCRs (dead VCRs always come in multiples and that was two decades' worth) to them. They were so pleased, they told me to bring my two old dead vacuum cleaners next time, and I was going to, but they went out of business. Was it something I did?
Anyway, my house is several tons lighter and that will help if I ever have to lift it.
When I was 72, I got tired of being cold all winter, or about nine months of the year, and decided to leave the electric blanket on most of the time and spend whatever hours I'm not under it on top of it. My cat agrees with this decision. (Electricity is still cheaper than gas heat at this writing, but when that changes, and it will, I'll decide something else.) In fact, for the third early June in a row, the blanket was still on, and I may progress to eating all three meals a day there. That is, on days I eat three. Not being fond of odd numbers, I'm more likely to have either two or four, depending.
When I was 72, I decided to learn Latin. That lasted for the whole six weeks the library let me have the book. But I do know approximately 99% more Latin than I did before. I also decided to write a murder mystery myself when the library, unaccountably, ran out of ones I hadn't read. That lasted a shorter time, through Chapter 11, at which point I read the whole edited, reprinted mess at once and realized it was the worst murder mystery I ever read, quite possibly the worst one ever written, made no sense, and I still didn't know myself who the murderer was. By Chapter 11 the writer should probably know that. So I stopped, turned the whole thing over, and now have a year's supply of scratch paper. (I'm nothing if not frugal.) (Sum nihil non servatus.)
When I was 72, I also learned new skills. One should never stop learning until one is dead, and possibly not even then. I acquired a cheap cordless drill and learned to drill quarter-inch holes in the bottoms of deep dishpans, coffee cans, whatever things I wanted to fill with potting soil and seeds. Drilling holes is so much fun I took to carrying my drill around the house, looking for other things that might need holes drilled in them. Unfortunately, there aren't many. But I definitely learned not to drill them in styrofoam tubs.
Another skill I learned was how to operate the refurbished DVD player that I'd spent over a year being too intimidated by to touch, without searching the 96 page instruction book (I am not kidding!) for what button to press for what and where it was on the foot-long remote among dozens of tiny buttons. In practice mode, I played all the seasons of all the thirty year old television series I could wangle out of the library and had a great time with murders, cops, P.I.s, and shoot-em-ups in exotic locales, mostly Hawaii. Who needs vacations? I get there easily. Just don't expect me to record anything. I have limits.
When I was 72, not being wealthy enough to pay multiple thousands of dollars to dentists, I lost two more tooth on my good chewing side, which made the final difference between whether I would or would not eat smoked almonds, Doritos or tacos again. I can make soft tacos and eat guacamole by itself, I guess. And I may manage popcorn, one of my major food groups. But if not, I'd think of something else I can drench with butter and salt, because butter and salt, along with caffeine, keep me alive. Butter to oil movement, salt as a preservative, and caffeine to remain conscious.
When I was 72, I became more philosophical about life, specifically about the bane of my existence, ball point pens. I finally accepted the fact that there is not one ball point pen on the face of the earth that will write when I want it to write, and bought a pencil sharpener. C'est la vie. Que sera sera. (Those are philosophical expressions in languages which are not Latin.)
When I was 72, I worried all year about whether I'd be able to pass the vision test to renew my driver's license. Since I can hardly see to drive if the sun is bright (nobody with cataracts likes bright sunshine) and can't see at all in the dark, I was hoping the advanced experience and intelligence that comes with age would see me through, in case attempting to memorize the eye charts at the eye doctor's office failed. It was touch and go for minute there, but I did okay. Then they informed me that I have to renew every three years now at my advanced age. So I can at least drive until I'm 76, but I take issue with their insulting old people. (Wait. Isn't that "racist"? Everything else is.) Old people are safer drivers than young people, whether we can see or not, because our brains work. And we're not texting on our cell phones.
Now I'm all through being 72. Was it a party? No. But was it a wake? No. It just wasn't a song parody. It was a very good year for the very good reason that I am still here and breathing. I can still do the important things like change light bulbs and pop the tops on Fancy Feast cans. In general, I'm thinking how much worse can 73 be? That's only one percentage point or about four times the fraction of a percent interest the bank pays on our meager savings. I got sixteen cents last month. Small change.
So on to 73! Tally ho, full speed ahead, and Never Give Up That Ship!
Thanks for reading.