Straight Talk About Geezeritus

I’ll be 40 in August. Did I say 40? I meant 60. . .something. Same difference. They both fall under the benign-sounding umbrella of “middle age,” though it seems to me calling 60 “middle” might be a tad optimistic.

Still, it’s a lovely time in life. I’d go so far as to say it’s the best time in life. For many of us, middle age offers more freedom than we’ve had since we were 21. And somehow we gain some credibility as we mature. Everyone believed me when I said I was 59. No one believed me all those years I said I was 29.

But middle age has a downside. It’s called geezeritus and I can sum it up in two little words. What now? One day we notice we’ve got less hair on our heads and more in our noses. We go to buy shoes and find out our feet are bigger. And by the way, so are our ears and nose. I’m not making that up. Cartilage continues to grow until we die and gravity makes our lobes hang down like the ears on a basset hound.

To be fair, we also shrink in a few places. The subcutaneous fat that fills out youthful faces decreases as we age, as does the fat that cushions the soles of young feet. I don’t know about you, but that’s not where I was hoping to lose inches. You see what’s happening, don’t you? As we age, fat leaves our feet and faces and migrates to our abs.

Middle age comes with an assortment of aches and pains too. Not long ago, I had a case of trigger finger though I don’t own a gun and I’ve had tennis elbow in both elbows. I haven’t played tennis in years, though apparently I have the elbows for it.

These sorts of issues make middle-aged people acutely aware of body parts we barely knew we had when we were younger. You’re probably thinking, “You didn’t realize you had elbows before?” Sure I did—but just on my right side. Being right handed, I was only vaguely aware of my left elbow in the same way I’m only vaguely aware of my spleen. I know it’s there; I’m just not sure what it’s good for.

More serious issues tend to show up in middle age too. I was 53 when I learned I’d inherited both glaucoma and thyroid disease from my mother. No fair! Some people inherit money.

It’s no wonder middle aged people start getting anxious about all sorts of things we never gave a thought to before. Every stomachache could be a rare disease, every headache could be a brain tumor and we start fearing early-onset Alzheimer’s every time we forget something. Obviously one of the things we’re forgetting is that we’ve been forgetting things our whole life.

I’m not complaining. Getting older beats dying young, and by a wide margin. And geezeritus doesn’t happen all at once, which is lucky. If we went to sleep 22 years old and woke up 62, we’d probably call 911 and report an intruder.

And we can take comfort in the fact that as long as we’re middle aged, we’re not old. Of course, we are, without a doubt, the oldest we’ve ever been. But most of us thought it would take a lot longer to get here. In fact, many of us thought we never would. Somehow all young people think they’re going to live a long time but never get old. Once we hit middle age, we see the foolishness in that and a lot of other things we used to think. Apparently we can have fat faces, or we can have brains. We can’t have both.

Dorothy Rosby is the author of three books of humorous essays including Alexa’s a Spy and Other Things to Be Ticked off About, Humorous Essays on the Hassles of Our Time. Contact drosby@rushmore.com.