By Roberta Curley
You’re getting old when…
You start craving ginger ale before bedtime AND find the burping an addictive pleasure.
Your back itches and you worry it’s shingles.
You’ve graduated to 3.0 for readers and there’s nowhere to leap but to prescription.
Your stomach leads you everywhere like a ballooning compass.
You buy shopping carts from Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Food Emporium, and The Container Store.
You dump each cart at Goodwill, vowing grocery-home-delivery FOREVERMORE.
You envision subway steps as a war zone, clinging to each railing like a kangaroo hugs her joeys.
You reflect: Youths are agile and speedy. Maybe subway transport should be banned for senior safety.
You take a one-day bus excursion from the senior center, marveling at the unsurpassable value of earplugs.
You’ve lost parents, friends, cats, dogs, and fish. Why gamble on a dating-service companion?
Your style becomes more and more “I’ll fall apart on my own, thank you.”
You’re consistently seated near the bathroom in restaurants. Is there a subliminal message, or should you simply be relieved?
You wonder if you emit a scent like ladies in old wives’ tales, and why men your own age opt for women 25 years their junior.
You know you’re wiser, don’t accept crap like you used to, know more doctors than your college granddaughter wishes she knew, AND you develop doubts about ENTITLEMENT.
Entitlement, though, gets you on the bus for the half-fare price, but something unexpected arrives too. You’re perceived as invisible, or if you’re lucky, ghostly gray.
Yet, there is ACCEPTANCE: You absorb the fact that, nine out of ten times, you’ll NEVER remember why you got up to enter another room…
Much fun and much truth! Ms. Curley should be on staff.