Linda and I went shopping today for a new toilet and a bathroom cabinet. It was tough work, and when we were done, it seemed a good idea to get lunch at a restaurant we frequent. We were seated in a booth, and across from us three tables had been joined to accommodate a party of 12. It looked as if most were in their 80’s, with some spillover into the 90’s. The youngest looked like “minders,” leading me to speculate that they’d all been let out as a treat from a home for seniors. Linda demurred. “I think they arrived in separate cars,” she said. (Well, of course they did, I thought. Only 12 clowns could arrive in the same car!)
Anyhow, the gabble was distracting to the point of irritation. All but one of them were women, naturally. Past a certain age, the population transforms into a single gender. And I have a theory that the impulse to chatter and to do it volubly increases with age, so that by the time women get to their 80’s you get a stereophonic hen house. The lone man, however, didn’t say a word. He sat quietly, moved his eyes, occasionally his entire head, and attended to his food.
I felt sad for him. I wondered whether there were any men in his life of his age. We don’t have a word in English—maybe not in any language—for “age solitude.” We ought to have one. “I hope he has some children,” I said. “Ones that aren’t in another state and can visit.”
Then one of the women announced, “I’m going to live dangerously. I’m ordering mashed potatoes!” I had to laugh at that. So this is what becomes of the concept of “danger” as we age. From bungee jumping to mashed potatoes. And really, when we enter our 80’s, how much danger is left in our lives? After you outlive the possibility of a young or middle-aged death, doesn’t danger get a demotion? Think of someone who’s 102 who says, “I could die any minute.” I don’t think I’d reply, “Well, then you’d better be careful.”
For some reason, they got on the subject of birthdays. It began with a mention of people not present and how old they were. The first age mentioned was 90-something, and then someone said so-and-so would soon be 105. This tickled many of them, and they began calling out their ages. A woman near me, the one who ordered the mashed potatoes, declared proudly that on May 2nd she would be 83. Clearly, something happens in the female brain in late middle age that causes women to lose any reluctance about giving out their age. I think it must be a kind of defiant resignation to nature: “OK, I admit it. Youth has fled. I’ve lost my shapely body, and I’m no longer alluring. But dammit, I’m a realist now, and I like who I’ve become!” Bully for that.
As we were finishing our lunches, I heard someone ask, “Who here has had cataract surgery?” Then someone replied, “Well, we all have, of course!” I thought that surely a few hadn’t, but they weren’t speaking up. Could it have been from embarrassment, as when the sailor says to his buddies, “We’ve all been to a whore house, right?” For sure—rite of passage.
I paid the check and told Linda I wanted to stop by the old guy on our way out and congratulate him. In a way, he was a kind of hero, like the last living marine to have fought on Iwo Jima. “OK,” Linda said. “But after I’m out the door.”
The Scratching Post 