by James Wallace Harris, 7/25/24
I had a very weird day yesterday. It made me feel weird. Nothing truly bad happened to me, but it felt like I was coming down with something. It’s hard to describe. A touch of anxiety, a tiny bit of dread, and a pinch of paranoia. Today that feeling is gone. Now that I’m getting older, I feel like I’m more susceptible to disease and unwanted emotions. I worry that they will get more intense as I get older.
It started when I drove to the library and discovered it was closed. The hand lettered signs on the doors said the library would be closed until next Monday. This was Wednesday, so that was odd. When I got home and told Susan she said she knew why. She had read that someone committed suicide inside the library on Monday. That generated a feeling I can’t describe.
Later, I drove off to meet a friend for lunch, and got pulled over by a policeman. It sent a rush of adrenalin through me. I was in the middle lane, and he pulled up behind me at a traffic light. I had seen him a few blocks earlier sitting on a side street, and I didn’t see him come up behind me until he blared his siren and flashed his blue lights. I thought maybe he had seen me while I was trying to swat a mosquito and I looked suspicious.
I maneuvered across the right lane and into a drop-off zone for a school. The officer was genuinely nice. He gave a rather long prologue apologizing for pulling me over, but said they were out in force looking for cars with defects. My right taillight was out. Our city stopped doing car inspections years ago to save money, so those kinds of violations are a problem. I was glad to learn about my problem and thanked him. He thanked me for being nice about it. Made me wonder how many people got angry with him.
However, the incident left me feeling hyper. Even though I got to lunch on time, I couldn’t relax. And my food tasted odd. I’m a vegetarian and I worried my cheese enchilada might have meat in it. I couldn’t see any, but it just added to the weirdness.
After lunch, while still in the parking lot, I got out my toolbox. I had a spare lightbulb, but I couldn’t undo the bolt holding in the light fixture with the plyers I had. That produced a bit annoyance.
I drove home worried I’d be pulled over again, but I got back without incidence. I quickly replaced the light bulb and thought things would be okay. I went in to pay my ticket online, but the online form wouldn’t work. Another bit of frustration.
Then I heard a big noise that I knew was a tree limb crashing down. That happens a lot around here because of all the trees. I went outside and a limb had fallen across the back end of my truck, along the ridge of the tailgate, where I had been working on the light. If I had been out there then, it would have conked me on the head. Now I was starting to feel paranoid.
Some days things just go wrong. When I was younger, I could work eight hours dealing with problem after problem and constant frustration, and it wouldn’t bother me. Why, now that I’m living the life of Riley in retirement, do tiny little disruptions in my routine gnaw at me? Is it aging?
I’ve noticed that some older people get agitated and flustered when trivial things go wrong. Is that my future? What will I be like at eighty? And ninety must be surreal.
I’ve always been laid back. And on most days, I still feel laid back. But some days, I’m a few percent off being at ease. I wonder if that’s going to get worse. Is it age, or is being retired, while developing an almost rigid routine of doing exactly what I wanted, ruined me for interruptions? It’s gotten so any day that I must do something out of the ordinary annoys me. That’s a wimpy way to be, and I don’t like it.
I’m reminded of a story a standup comic told decades ago. I forgot who it was, maybe George Carlin or Woody Allen. It was about a New Yorker who was terrified of getting mugged. The advice he got was to get up every morning and pistol whip himself. I thought it absurdly funny back then, but there might be a bit of valid advice in it today.
After a good night’s sleep, I feel normal again today. I was able to pay my ticket online, and I’ve been able to follow my rut routinely. However, I’m not ready to leave the house looking for trouble. I guess I’m chicken.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
I was told, long ago, that to ensure nothing ever bothered me, that I should eat two toads for breakfast every morning. And to be sure not to eat the smallest one first. That would ensure nothing worse happened that day.
I used to be one of those very pessimistic folks. Always expecting the very worst. One day, I woke up, and in reading the news, as I always do, realized that I had not had to dig my kids out from under burning rubble that day. And that there had been quite a few people who were doing exactly that this particular morning. I realized that I was, in fact, both lucky and blessed!
I’ve also found out that the medications you take can have an effect on your outlook. Earlier this year I started taking a systemic anti-fungal medicine. Terbinafine. It’s used to treat toenail fungus, and takes months to have the desired effect. About halfway through the 3rd month I started waking up in the middle of the night, and obsessing over mistakes I’d made as a young man. This was stuff I’d done, or not done, over 50 years ago. Much too late to change those decisions. Mentioned it to my son-in-law, who told me that terbinafine was known to have psychoactive effects on some users. Quit taking it after a few days of reducing the dosage to taper off, and stopped having the problem.
You might want to check the side effects of the medications you’re using, particularly anything that might be relatively new to you. But interrupted sleep can also cause you problems… Good luck figuring it out!
That’s a good point. The trouble is, the two main drugs I take, are for my heart, and I can’t just stop using them.
But you reminded me of something. I saw an ad on television awhile back. It was a drug, mostly for older men, for people who felt too emotional. Evidently, from the ad, some men do get more emotional as they get older. One of them symptoms was crying. I don’t cry. At least not yet. However, I get teary eyed at movies where that never happened before.
My wife has been laughing at me longer than we’ve been married (42 years next month) for crying at movies. I don’t cry for much of anything else. I grew up when the message to boys was that we didn’t cry. No matter what.
I didn’t cry when my mom and dad died, about 10 years apart. Did cry last time I talked to my step-mom. She didn’t know who I was. Mom & dad divorced when I was 4yo, Dad remarried when I was 6, and stepmom was 17. I’m 69 now.
Mom was on her third case af ovarian cancer when she died, after refusing chemo the third time. At age 65.
Dad was in ICU for over a month after a heart valve replacement failed… they’d also had potentially cancerous spots on his tongue & in a lung, but a dental infection is what destroyed the heart valve. Dad was 77.
In both cases, their passing was a blessing. That call with my step-mom was only a couple months ago. She was a great mom, too. She’s 80.
I didn’t cry when my mother and father died either. I haven’t boo-hoo cried since I was in the third grade. I remember it well. I was about to get a shot at the doctor’s office, and I let out a wail. The doctor calmly said to me, “Do you know that you don’t have to cry?” I paused at this. He then assured me that crying was optional. So, I let him stick me and I didn’t cry. That was a marvelous revelation. After that, whenever my mother would switch me, or my father would belt me I wouldn’t cry. My father stopped trying, but my mother would try all the harder. She’d go nuts. I got off on that. Not being switched but being able to defy her.
It’s only been in recent years that I would get misty eyed at movies or trying to talk about certain subjects. I always choke up when I describe Dunkirk to people, and a few other examples of bravery. The ending of Battleground chokes me up too.
Well, I feel a bit like that today. I lost the key to the side gate of our house, which is the only way to get from the back of the house to the front yard. Well, except for the front door. Both Corinne and I conducted an absolutely forensic search for the key, including places it couldn’t possibly have been. This is not a key that travels. Its place is on a hook in the kitchen. Every evening I take it off the hook, walk around the house, unlock and open the gate, and play with the cats in the front of the house, with the key in my pocket. Then we go back inside and I put the key back on the hook. But this evening it wasn’t there; it’s just vanished into thin air. I found a spare, but now I’ll have to have another one made, so that I still have two keys.
This is so upsetting. The same thing happened about five years ago, and on that occasion the key didn’t turn up, either. All the questions about ageing crowd in, just as you say.
When things disappear and you feel they were right there, it’s so annoying.
At sixty, I can already relate to this.
my pet peeves these days are people who talk at street level in the library, and people who get on my case ofor sitting when their kids are standing on the train. seems like i was usually being poked and prodded when i was younger: ‘you don’t sit when grownups are standing!’ now it’s:’he’s a little boy,he’s tired.’ if i bother to reply, i usually say:’ s’matter,man,you too cheap to hire a sitter?’ recalling the late,lamented w.c. fields: ‘get outta here,boy, you bother me. beat it,kid, you draw flies.’ curmudgeons of the world, the line forms to the rear!
he’s not politically correct these days,but a line from one of bill cosbys old routines was going thr ough my mind on the geary boulevard bus a few evenings back: ‘what! let some stranger look after my kid? i’d just as soon leave him home by himself.’
There has been a million great lines uttered by thousands of politically incorrect humans. So it goes.
My parents felt that way. They started leaving us alone when I was 9 and my sister was 7. Man, I’d hate growing up today with parents that were always hovering nearby.
We grew up like Charlie Brown and Lucy. Parents were seldom seen and we didn’t want to hear them any more than they wanted to hear us.