Today’s little public service announcement will be filed under "Things No One Told Me About Getting Older.” It sits next to items like “What The Heck Is Growing Out Of My Chin?” and “Young Men Are Nice To Me Because I Remind Them Of Their Grandmother.” For every happy observation (“Senior Discounts Aren’t Too Shabby!”) there is at least one sobering reality check (“Clerks Are Applying Senior Discounts Without Carding Me!”).
So be warned: there will come a time when you cannot remember the last time you sat down on the floor to do anything. This creeps up on you: it’s Christmas, and you realize that standing or sitting at a high counter and wrapping presents is easier, so you don’t sit on the floor and spread out to wrap that box of cigars. You want to plant an herb garden, and just before you start digging up your side yard you realize that it will be a pain to tend it, so you build a raised bed for your basil.
Make that trade often enough, and you will have another realization, frequently in front of other people, perhaps after you’ve plopped your fanny on a picnic blanket and then want to stand up after a couple of hours: it’s been years since you’ve done this, and you’re not sure you’re going to be able to bounce up without laboring like a, well, a hippo in labor or worse, without some assistance from the fire department and a hoist. Not that this has ever happened to me, of course.
And really, who are you kidding? You’re not that mobile when you do manage to climb to your feet. If you sit too long you sort of freeze into place and you lumber around like Frankenstein until you limber up again. You’re making weird noises when you get up from the couch. For that matter, you are spending way too much time on the couch.
So there you are, stuck on this picnic blanket and regretting many of your life choices, and still faced with the pressing need to get off the blanket before night falls and park rangers do it for you. You could wait until everyone at the picnic leaves, and then clamber to your feet (see ‘hippo in labor,’ above) under cover of darkness. You could accept the help of anyone sturdy enough to haul you to your feet and risk toppling them. You could melt with embarrassment, change your name, move away, and pretend this never happened. (That last one won’t work, because first you’d have to stand up).
Or you could face facts: you’re not getting any younger. More facts: If you’d like to be able to move 20 years from now, you need to move now.
And of course, when I say ‘you,’ I really mean, ‘me.’
Sitting there on the picnic blanket, knees hurting, embarrassed, and swearing that this is the last time I faced public humiliation because I spent every PE class I ever took making smart aleck comments in the back of the class and never did quit snarking about exercise while I ate a bag of potato chips…I did the only thing I could do:
I swore that I would make a public promise to you, my readers (all four of you!) that next month’s column would be a detailed description of me exercising every single day, recording what I ate, and not eating entire bags of potato chips.
That’s a lot of swearing, and I’m pretty sure there’s more where that came from. I will, however, refrain from transcribing the actual cussing into the details. I won’t tell you what I weigh, because I will take that to my grave, but I will report my progress.
I’d close by saying “Film at 11!” but there’s no way I’m getting in front of a camera. I still haven’t gotten off that damned blanket.
Elizabeth Evans is a local mother, wife, daughter, sister, former stay-at-home mom, former work-outside-the-home mom, former work-at-home mom and a human resources consultant.
