Opinion

DAZE WORK: Growing old will get ya if ya don’t watch out

Monday, August 2, 2021

As I sat, half-hunched over and sweltering at the Putnam County Fair last week, it came to me that the fair really ought to have some senior citizen competition.

Oh sure, I know the fair offers adult open competition in a number of things from pie baking to quilt making to photography. But it’s missing the boat without a competition where seniors can share their various maladies with the winner getting a blue ribbon in growing old gracefully.

Have you ever heard older people talk about their aches and pains? This contest could go on longer than, as Shakespeare put it, “forever and a day.”

I believe it was my grandma -- whose cinnamon rolls and distinctive pumpkin pie I can still taste in my mind -- was the first to tell me “growing old stinks,” or something a mite stronger and more colorful as she agonizingly whithered from the plump, loving Granny Grassman I’d always known to a tiny, bony thing I was afraid to wrap my warms around after the ravages of cancer caught up to her.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about that as I’ve faced my own issues with my heart, my knees, my head, and now, the bane of aging folks’ existence -- a “flare-up” of gout.

I’m not sure why it’s always a “flare-up” of gout or a “painful flare-up” when the doctor or TV pitchmen are talking about it. A bout of gout sounds so much better. It’s undoubtedly because once that uric acid stuff that leads to gout is in your system, it’s there, hiding in your appendix or someplace until it flares up again.

Truth be told, I’ve battled a bout of gout once before in my life. The first time when I was about 30 and couldn’t stand on my left foot to get out of bed, I thought I’d broken my foot somehow, but the first thing Dr. Haggerty asked me was, “Do you eat a lot of rich foods -- shellfish, sweets, red meat?” Who was I, Henry the VIII?

Well, living in landlocked Indiana, there are few options available for good shrimp or shellfish, and at age 30 with two small children, who could afford steak? Heck, I was lucky to pony up for a sweet or two now and then.

While I’ve always considered gout an “old peoples’ disease,” I’m staring it in the face again now after 40 years. Awkwardly, it’s settled into my left hand this time.

Typing is part of what I do for a living, and now I find myself with a left hand as puffy as an old Yogi Berra catcher’s mitt. It’s like I’m typing with hockey gloves on. Painful to the touch. Painful to grab anything. I’ve screamed out loud a couple times after just a glancing blow on the door jamb.

If my Mizzou class ring gets any tighter on my middle finger, I might have to go see some friends at the funeral home or firehouse to cut it off. The ring, I mean. We all know the middle finger is the one we can least afford to lose and continue to express ourselves adequately. Besides that, it can affect your balance, your curveball grip and typing E’s on your keyboard.

If it gets any worse I might be sucking sushi through a straw.

George Washington supposedly once said, “Let your heart feel for the affliction and distress in everyone.” Maybe he was talking through his wooden teeth, I don’t know, but just the same, I’d say he is right.

Going for the gold in aching on aging is something I can wrap my head around. Blue ribbon at the fair, on to a gold at the winter-of-our-years Olympics.

After all, I’ve got a good start with a repaired but barely functioning rotator cuff, a permanently severed biceps tendon, a stent in my heart, two wobbly knees and now, a bout of gout.

So yeah, getting old sucks ... Sorry, granny.

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  • Hilarious! But so many of us senior citizens can relate!

    -- Posted by mamawjane1951 on Tue, Aug 3, 2021, at 6:18 PM
  • Great great article. Had to laugh reading it but at the same time had a moment of sympathy for you. I remember my dad riding his bicycle to Fillmore in some type of Marathon at age 74. His genes did not pass down to me. It is very hard for some of us to grow old ‘gracefully’ and I am one of them.

    -- Posted by Nit on Tue, Aug 3, 2021, at 7:57 PM
  • Good article , always remember growing old sure beats the alternative :)

    -- Posted by Workingthesoil on Wed, Aug 4, 2021, at 10:56 AM
  • *

    I laughed, I cried and I rolled in the dirt... (Need to sweep my floor)

    Some folks are able to age gracefully, me not so much... If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself... But alas I didn't and now I don't even buy green banana's...

    You sir are an American hero... Small town wordsmith passing on words of wisdom to the naïve...

    Thank you Sir...

    -- Posted by ridgerunner54 on Wed, Aug 4, 2021, at 5:33 PM
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