They call it our golden years when we reach the age I am now; when no longer do we have to meet deadlines or live up to another's expectations, or for that matter prove anything to anyone. If you are like me you may have looked forward to the time when you could finally slow down or even stop keeping a schedule of any kind. I used to dream of the day when I could stop working and just relax anytime I felt like it; perhaps write my memoirs (as mundane or uninteresting as that might sound) while the rest of the world was out there slugging it out every day for whatever they wanted.
Then I got there, and I arrived with about 95% of my teeth still in my mouth, most of my hair in places it ought to be and with all of my body parts still attached (except my tonsils) but most of them not working nearly as well as they once did! I got here much sooner than I thought I would because as we get older time continues to fly whether we are having much fun or not. My own golden years showed up in the blink of an eye, and speaking of eyes, mine ain't what they used to be either.
In addition to spending more time writing than I probably should I also read more now than I used to and a lot of what I read is stuff I wish I hadn't. The news, for example; most of it is more depressing than it ever was to me and because I am getting older I find myself reading things that happen to other old people and what I might expect to also happen to me! For instance: I just read a piece on the Internet that talked about what happens to a man's penis when he gets old. Now that was an article I never would have paid any attention to back when mine mattered more to me than it ever will again.
But I read it nonetheless even though I knew it would depress me and there isn't anything we can do about it. As a matter of fact the writer pointed that out; the penis loses its elasticity, it shrinks and struggles to perform the basic functions we used to enjoy and there isn't any way to stop the aging process. In other words, it too becomes golden after a lot of years pass and for guys like me who resist change when change doesn't suit us the news about this is not good, but it also is not devastating because I now have fewer reasons to care about things like that than I did when I was in my 30s and there has been a lot of interesting distance covered since then.
It won't matter to anyone but me that I have become like every other old guy in this respect but still I feel a measurable amount of sadness about the whole thing because not a day goes by where there isn't a reason to think about it or be reminded of it, and it can happen at the oddest times; like when I am watching television and a commercial comes on about pills for men with erectile dysfunction and I see some guy in it who looks to be half my age sitting in a bath tub holding hands with a woman half my age.
At a time like that I think to myself how lucky I was through the years I never needed to have that discussion with my doctor and still don't because it really doesn't matter if mine is still functional or not and all of that stopped being a priority anyway. But still it seems unfair when you consider that as we age we get a few inches shorter but our nose and ears become larger; those parts that everyone sees every day become less attractive while the part we are urged to keep covered grows smaller, and according to the article as it shrinks our testicles actually grow longer!
Not a pretty sight to look forward to.
Throw in that our butts also lose their curvature and become flatter, or in some cases sag there isn't much left in terms of physical attraction (if we ever had any to begin with), and barely anything left of us to attract positive attention from anyone else besides our personality (if we can make it interesting) or something that sets us apart from others (if we can discover what that might be and hone it).
That butt issue has become more depressing to me than having become a man with a golden gun because it changed how my pants fit. I see men older than me whose belt-lines line up with their nipples and I understand why so many need suspenders to hold them up and why having more room in the crotch area makes less sense (unless it is because our testicles will fall further than they used to hang).
The moral of this amoral story is my golden years and everything about them that is golden came with hidden fees I never anticipated. But I began this piece by hinting it would be a James Bond story and it is; for anyone familiar with the early Bond flicks you might recall that his boss, an aging but distinguished gentleman known only as "M" always looked at 007 with a scowl on his face and usually spoke to him condescendingly, as if he were disgusted by him, and with blatant resentment even when he knew he was the best agent Her Majesty's Secret Service employed.
I suspect that it wasn't personal; the man was merely jealous.
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