Getting old … er … older – Page 2

I suppose I should be more upset about it. Turning 48. Yep, that’s what I’m about to do. Don’t have much say in the matter. Father time doesn’t exactly ask if you want to go sky diving. He just throws you out the plane door whether you’re ready or not. “Don’t forget to pull the ripcord!”

“RIPCORD!?! Nobody said anything about a ‘ripcord?’”

SPLATTT!!!

I guess my philosophy is you can’t get too upset over something you have no control over. Ate a whole cake? You did that. Had a mid-life crisis and bought an alpaca? Well, you should have been a normal person and bought an expensive sports car you don’t know how to drive or got a tattoo that says: “Couldn’t think of anything better.”

Turning a year older is the one thing in life out of your hands, so why get bothered by it? Why rue it?

Besides, I thought understood it. There was supposed to be a nice tradeoff: “With age comes wisdom,” the old adage goes.

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Getting old ... er ... older

The fountain of youth in a face mask?

November 3, 2020 No Comments

OK, folks. I know masks have become a polarizing, hot potato issue. So, I’m not here to lecture about the health benefits or reasons to put them on in order to ward off COVID-19. Rather, I’m here to share one little-known benefit that not everyone realizes about face coverings: They make you younger!

I’m living proof of this. I kid you not.

I don’t know that a lot of research has been done on the topic, but I have all the proof I need. The truth is, they can take at least 25 years off of your age, if not more.

Don’t believe me? Listen to this: It all happened to me at the grocery store while I was wearing a gray mask with black trimming. (Not sure the coloring is the key, but wanted to share that in case.)

I was piling all of my groceries — mostly cookies, ice cream and my weekly ration of beer in a case so big you could carry a bear in it – onto the conveyor belt.

As the nice cashier slid the behemoth carton across the scanner, she looked up at me and without the slightest hesitation said, “Can I see your ID, please?”

A choir of angels sang and I could hear celestial trumpets playing in the background.

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Getting old ... er ... older, Health

Taking the fitness challenge … thanks to Thor

May 27, 2020 No Comments

I don’t like challenges. You know, those Internet crazes? The dance challenges (can’t dance.) The eat-more-kale challenges (hate kale.) And the ever-annoying fitness challenges (don’t need it … hypnotized myself to believe I’m already fit.)

But I DO like cookies. And this love of mine seems to be taking a small toll on me recently. Maybe all of this working from home has made me slightly more sedentary. Or the stress of work combined with the pandemic has had an effect. Maybe I’m not running as much as I used to, or my age is catching up to me a little bit.

Add to that the fact that my kitchen looks like a grocery store cookie aisle.

One of the best parts about working from home is the readily available supply of cookies at my immediate disposal. In the middle of any video conference, no matter how important it is, I can say, “Oh, I’m so sorry … can you hold on one sec. Minor emergency,” and duck out to grab a cookie. It’s reason No. 1 most Americans don’t want to return to the office.

But it certainly comes with its downsides. Or should I say, EXPANDING-sides. That’s what I started noticing recently. First, when I dropped a notch in my belt. And second, when I ordered a new pair of running shorts in the size I’ve always worn, only to find them a little more “form-fitting.” You know … SNUG!

2020 Nutshells, Family, Getting old ... er ... older, In the News

When the ‘angries’ come to roost

March 12, 2020 No Comments

Don’t you round up my age, mama!

Boy, that makes me angry. And I was already a bit perturbed.

I had just canceled a trip to New York for a conference over concerns about the coronavirus.

I was reporting this to my mother, who thought it was for the best. For once in my life, I agreed with her … until she said something I wasn’t ready for: “You know, Brian, you’re 50 now, and they’re saying older people are at higher risk.”

Wait a minute … WHAT did you just say?!?

Fifty!

FIF-ty!

FIF-@%$&#-TY!!!

Hold on for just 47 seconds, because … I AM NOT 50. I am 47 years of age. Just turned 47. A whipper-snapper, when measured against the age of the galaxies. If you carbon date me – I dare you to try … I fight like a 17-year-old! – I wouldn’t even register. Well, maybe back to caveman days, but still pretty darn young.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Getting old ... er ... older, Parenthood and Children

Does the mirror think I’m old, too?

January 29, 2020 No Comments

They’re not big numbers. Not on their own. As individuals. Leave them by themselves and people would think you were very young. A pup. So cute. Adorable, even!

But combine them as an age – just like that little gremlin of a daughter did to me the other day – and they sound pretty horrible. Angry. Tired and worn out.

I won’t say the two numbers that when put together mark my years on this Earth. They’re kind of painful.

But she did.

We were riding along, making idle chit-chat. Because she’s 14 and most of the time I don’t know what to say to her, I just pick random things that pop into my mind. Things I think a 14-year-old might find fascinating and REALLY cool. So, I said, “Can you believe it’s almost February?”

“Yeah,” she said, with the enthusiasm of a can of corn. “And you know what else? That means it’s almost your birthday.”

If she had just left it there, it would have been one of those “warm your heart moments.” What a sweet angel. She remembered my birthday is coming.

But … she didn’t leave it there.

2019 Nutshells, Family, Getting old ... er ... older, Health, Holidays, Parenthood and Children

Little Christmas traditions, even through BLANGITY sickness

December 18, 2019 No Comments

She really should have been in bed. After spending the day throwing up in dramatic fashion – you know, like all over the car after getting picked up early from school – she should have been tucked under the covers. Resting. Trying to sleep.

“I threw up nine times today, dad,” she told me at one point. Whether it was a cry for sympathy or a badge of honor, I wasn’t quite sure.

But I did know she needed to be in bed, and I had told her this about 94 times that evening. In about 94 different ways, all escalating in seriousness and frustration and meanness. “GO … TO … BED, BLINGITY-BLANGIN’-BLANGIT!”

And on the 94th try, I thought I had done it. She trudged off to her room.

2019 Nutshells, Getting old ... er ... older, Parenthood and Children

Scary movies just don’t scare like they used to

October 16, 2019 No Comments

Maybe this isn’t a good idea. I remember thinking this as we sat down on the sofa and flipped on the TV.

And when I recall thinking this in the past, it DEFINITELY was NOT good.

There was the time when my daughter was just a wee-little snap and I showed her a scene from the movie, “Beetlejuice.” She was 4 years old and I played the part where two ghosts are trying to run new owners out of their house by making them dance around the dinner table to Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O.”

It’s a really funny scene and super-catchy for kids … right up until the moment that the dinner party collapses into their seats while the shrimp cocktails jump up like hands and grab their faces.

SHRIMP … GRAB … THEIR … FACES!!!

My daughter quietly turned away from the screen muttering, “Why did hands come out of the table?” … along with something about the phone number for Child Services.

2019 Nutshells, Getting old ... er ... older, Parenthood and Children

Lessons from lugging boxes at college move-in day

August 29, 2019 No Comments

Just like all across the country, this past weekend was move-in day at Flagler College. It’s where I work, and also where I graduated oh-so many moons ago. So with a little bit of nostalgia, and a whole lot of masochism, I like to go back each move-in to help new college freshmen carry all their possessions – which must include numerous granite boulders – up to their dorm rooms. You learn quite a few things about the world, and yourself, when you undertake such physical exertion under the blazing August Florida heat. Important things, such as:

• You’re not as strong as you look. Actually, I don’t even look strong. Pretty scrawny, actually. So I don’t know why I try to be a hero and carry all the big boxes. I should stick to comforters, or boxes of tissues. But not me! I had to act super-strong and say things like, “Shoot, that shoe bin weighs more than twice my weight? Pshaw! No problem. Just strap it to my back with these ratchet tie-downs and don’t worry when you hear a snapping sound. That’s just my spinal cord rupturing.”

• You will feel such excruciating pain in the muscles on the insides of your elbows for days afterward. It will make you wonder if little aliens are about to pop out. I don’t know what those muscles are, or why after carrying boxes they hurt so much. But I would surmise by the awful pain that they have never been used before in my life.

2019 Nutshells, Getting old ... er ... older, Houses, yards and projects

The all-over creaky, sore funk

April 3, 2019 No Comments

Sore. So … sore. Not pain. Pain is more specific. It signals injury. That you hurt one thing, in one specific place. It’s isolated. But not sore. Sore is everywhere. Sore is kind of a … creaky funk? An all-over malaise. An affliction. A general misery.

Sore is … well … sore is getting older.

This occurred to me the other day as I bent over to pick up a piece of trash outside my office. Thanks to gravity, I had no trouble getting down there. But as I faced the prospect of standing back up, my body creaked and groaned like a diesel-belching steam shovel. “OWWCHHHH!” I moaned as I got back to my feet. It must have been terrifying because two college students observing this whole episode in the hallway stared in horror. “Are you ok?” they asked. I think they nearly ran to get a defibrillator. Or maybe a shovel, figuring it was better to whack me over the head, put me out of my misery and bury me in the back parking lot.