Sunday, March 3, 2013

Elderly? Not quite.


      elderly Use this word carefully and sparingly.
      It is appropriate in generic phrases that do not
refer to specific individuals:
concern for the elderly, a home for the elderly, etc.
      If the intent is to show that an individual‘s physical or mental capabilities
have deteriorated as a direct result of age, cite a graphic example and give attribution for it
      Apply the same principle to terms such as senior citizens.
                                             --The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual


Most mornings at the breakfast table, the newspaper spread out in front of me, I come on references to someone about my age as “elderly” or even “old.” “Damn kid reporters,” I mutter. “They probably see anyone over 30 as ‘I mean, you know, like, ancient’” And they have not read the “AP Stylebook,” as they should have.

I have no objection to “senior citizen” as long as I’m getting the discount. I do object to “elderly” and “old,” however, and not just on journalistic grounds. It’s personal. (My use of it in the blog's standing matter is just funnin', as we say down South.)

I know I have some gray hair. Well, maybe most of what I have is gray. Regardless, I notice when I comb it that it is thinning (but who wants fat hair, I might wisecrack to my grandsons to watch their eyes roll). And when, with razor in hand, I look in the mirror every morning, I recognize the face right away. It is the same face I’ve been looking at since I began shaving, though it is somewhat wrinkled now and sags a bit in spots.

Otherwise I’m not aware of any major changes. In fact, I weigh the same as I did when I got out of the Army half a century ago, though I’ll concede that the weight is redistributed somewhat and, perhaps, a bit flabby When I change my shirt I notice—well, I’d rather not mention those.

Oh, yeah. One leg has become a touch gimpy. Putting on my shorts and trousers in the mornings has become a balancing act. And I’ve long since stopped practicing my Chevalier “Stairway to Paradise” routine.

I’ve experienced a few other changes, too. Once upon a time I had a doctor. One. Now he’s my “primary care physician,” and in recent years I’ve added enough specialists to seat around a poker table.

The eye doctor, whom I used to visit only when the golden arches logo on McDonald’s billboards got a little blurry, not long ago took away my spectacles—I’d worn glasses since I was eight or nine years old—removed cataract-clouded lenses from both of my eyes, and inserted machine-made lenses in their place. But while I can see him and his “E” clearly now, he still has me in for regular visits. “You aren’t getting any younger, you know,” he reminded me the last time. I still have glasses for close reading—five or six pairs in various places somewhere around the house. Give me a minute and I can find one.

I’ve acquired a cardiologist who is young enough to have two pre-school children. She observed that I have some sort of leakage in my heart. “But don’t worry,” she told me. “A lot of older people have that.” She told me she wanted to make sure that I didn’t have any fluid buildup. She prescribed a pill for me to take every morning that keeps me draining fluid all day, and often. She warned me not to take to the pill before going to bed. It would keep me going to the bathroom all night, she said. As if that would be a change in my routine.

There’s the GI doc, too, though I see him rarely now. When I was a young fellow of 58, he peered down into my esophagus fairly frequently for two or three months to see how a cancer that had developed there was responding to treatments by my chemotherapy and radiation docs. A few years later, he peered up into my colon—finding nothing, I’m happy to say. In my slightly drugged state during that exam, I thought I could hear him humming “I’ve looked at love from both sides now.”

Getting rid of the remains of the cancer, by the way, took a general surgeon and a thoracic surgeon. I didn’t meet the latter until he walked into the prep room to introduce himself just before the operation. Frankly, I was concerned, because he looked to me to be too young to be wearing scrubs. A Boy Scout uniform, yes. But he and the surgeon successfully took me apart, cut out what they were looking for, and put me back together. Is there a merit badge for surgery?

Most recently I acquired an audiologist. For a year or two—maybe more; I forget exactly—I endured the missus yelling “Get a hearing aid!” every time I asked “What?” in response to something she had said. So I finally had my ears tested and, after, bought a pair of hearing aids.

“How much were they?” she asked, when I came home wearing them. I told her--and it was her turn:  “WHAT?” she exclaimed, and I thought, but did not say—being only aging, not crazy—that if she had always spoken to me with that volume, I would not have needed the hearing aids.

Then, one recent evening I walked into the den while the missus was watching a college basketball game. I looked at the screen just as the scene switched from the court to the commentators’ booth. In the center was a much-lined, almost wizened, face I thought I knew. I will concede that I have a problem remembering names occasionally (the only folks I know immediately are the ubiquitous “whatsisname” and “whatsername”) and it took me a minute to slowly run through the alphabet testing names until I got to “N.”

“Knight!” I exclaimed. “Bobby Knight!” Of course. For many years he was the successful and controversial Indiana University basketball coach. Who could forget him?

I moved closer to the tv set and squinted.

“My gawd, he’s gotten old!” I said.

The missus said nothing. I looked at her. She stared at me with an odd and curious cat-that-swallowed-the canary expression on her face that pretty well told me what she thought.

I went up to my workroom and sat at the computer.

“Bobby Knight. He can’t be much older than I am, I thought. “Five or six years? Maybe seven?”

I typed his name into the Google search box on the screen and clicked to a biography.

“Born: October 25, 1940. “

Three and a half years younger than I.  I was astounded.

“My gawd!” I whispered. 

I could see in my mind’s eye that look that the missus had given me.

Since then, I have admitted to myself that I am somewhat worn, no longer quite the same fellow who worked at the peach-fuzz on his face with a Gillette blue blade safety razor.

But elderly? I don’t think so, no matter what those twenty-something reporters say.

Edging up on it, possibly.

But old? Hell, no.







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