I’ve Got the Three Days From Now I’ll Be 69 Next Year I’ll Be 70 and Where Did My Life Go Blues

hourglassCUE: Piano, jazz trumpeter and torch singer, performing the sad song of all sad songs. This song makes other sad songs feel bad about themselves.

Pretty good, the way I set the scene, huh?

ME: The sands of time have almost all trickled to the bottom of the whatchamacallit* that holds them. The shadow on the sundial is edging toward evening. Not to be outdone by outdated timepieces, the iPhone in my purse is slowly numbering the minutes of my life and occasionally vibrating to remind me I’m going to die someday.

In three days, I will be a year older. Actually, I will only be one day older than I will be in two days, but my birthday is on February 22,** and on that day it will be official. I will have been on this earth 69 years. This means that on February 22, 2015 I will be 70 years old. At that point, I will have to seriously consider that I might be moving from middle age to beginning elderliness.

The 20 year old inside me still thinks she’s a 20 year old, which complicates things a lot. This gets even more complicated when I use my age as an excuse for getting out of doing things I don’t want to do, like carrying heavy packages at work. In other words, for the sake of convenience, I will sometimes replace the inner 20 year old with an inner 68 year old, just for the time it takes to get someone to feel sorry enough to do something for me. This never lasts long, though. The 20 year old Kathy sneaks right back in. That’s okay with me, because she has fun.

Yes, but the 20 year old Kathy has dark brown hair and she wears a Size 16. Her skin is clear and she can take a staircase 2 steps at a time. This Kathy is always surprised when she looks in the mirror and sees a fat woman with salt and pepper hair and a few noticeable wrinkles. Photographs are an even more shocking jolt of reality.

I plan to deal with age by paying no attention to it. Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away. The way I see it, I have a future as long as I am still breathing. I can choose between the following careers:

1. Humor writer
2. Cougar
3. Cat lady
4. Obnoxious constituent who bugs local politicians
5. Hearing aid tester

I guess it isn’t over yet after all.

*It just took me three minutes to remember the word “hourglass.”

**I don’t have enough troubles. I had to be born a Pisces as well.

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12 thoughts on “I’ve Got the Three Days From Now I’ll Be 69 Next Year I’ll Be 70 and Where Did My Life Go Blues”

  1. Hah! My arithmetic was off. I was born in ’46, which will make me 68, not 69. Oh well. Same difference.

    1. I wouldn’t mind having a 20 year old body again. My knees didn’t hurt back then, and, even though everybody kept telling me I was too fat, I was a lot thinner than I am now.

      And I agree. Being 20 wasn’t much fun when we actually WERE 20.

    1. What Bill Y was trying to say before the keyboard decided to do its own thing was, I have a feeling 20 yo Kathy rules older Kathy and long may it last.

      PS: Please don’t become Cat Lady Kathy – it may have a cool ring to it but it’s not cool!

      1. No worries! One thing I will NEVER become is an animal hoarder. That is a cruel way to make critters live.

        My cat wouldn’t stand for it, anyway. She likes being the queen of the house.

        And I plan to keep 20 year old Kathy around forever, if possible.

    1. Twenty year old Kathy isn’t going anywhere if I have anything to say about it. 😉

      The funny thing is, I was a mess when I was 20 years old. I’m trying to keep the best of being that age (mentally) while keeping at least a semblance of the wisdom of age.

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