The Author's Thoughts on Growing Old
My dark thoughts today are brought to you courtesy of my upcoming annual checkup.
Whoever said ‘growing old isn’t for sissies’ wasn’t joking. People I know are getting close to being bionic while others, well me anyhow, are trying to delay the day when bits must be replaced by living a healthy lifestyle.
People have tried since time began to cure aging; think of Cleopatra bathing in asses’ milk, or vampires drinking virgins' blood. Or Spanish explorers searched the Florida for the Fountain of Youth; forerunners of the aged snowbirds who flock there each winter in our time. In the Age of Reason, they drank the blood of executed criminals; one can only imagine what an Age of Superstition would have come up with.
The early Twentieth Century folks were fortunate enough to live in a time of science and learning -- so they only injected themselves with monkey gland serum. I’m glad I live in Twenty-first Century when we know so much more and have altogether better medicine, which are driving life expectancy down -- in the USA, at least. So much for science.
I may delay the evil day but soon or later an eye surgeon will be popping out my worn-out human lenses and slipping in some fine plastic ones. My joints will go, and I’ll be fitted up with titanium parts that never corrode. When they said we’d all live to be a hundred, I foolishly thought they meant in our own bodies.
Just so you know, from today my newsletter will be published on or around the 1st and 15th of every month.
