Growing Old

Growing old? Not really looking forward to it. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to be a little old lady, shuffling around with my walker, and whacking ‘those damn punks’ with my cane for walking around with their pants around their knees. There are certain things about growing old that I’m sure will be fun.

But there’s quite a few things that I enjoy about being young. To start with, there’s my eyesight: perfect vision in one eye, beyond perfect vision in the other eye. Not sure how that happens, but it’s pretty awesome. I’ve been told by family members that my eyes will probably get worse as I get older, as every member of my immediate family wears glasses. As it is right now, I stare at a computer and television screen virtually all day long, I read and write in the dark, and I don’t really exercise my eyes at all. So for now, I’m twenty years old, and I have perfect/beyond perfect eyesight. It would really suck to grow out of that.

Another thing that I love about being young, is my ability to stay up until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, wake up at 7 in the morning, and not be completely bogged all day. I was just discussing this with my mother, who went to bed at 8:30 pm, and she asked me how I do it. How I stay up all night and all day, and am not tired throughout the day. The obvious answer was that I’m thirty years younger than her. I’m a pretty big night owl, it is rare for me to go to bed before midnight. I love that. Wish I could do it for the rest of my life.

The ability to blare my music in my headphones: yes, this will probably result in some hearing loss when I’m older, but I absolutely hate quiet music. I don’t like straining my ears to hear something, I enjoy being surrounded by the sound. So, I blare my music. I love it. It sounds good to me. But, I’m sure that when I get older, I’ll be telling those young punks to turn down their ‘noise’. Sigh …

Writing: With all the writing, typing and cracking of my knuckles that I do, I just know that I'm going to get arthritis when I'm older. Not looking forward to that. I love typing fast. It's fun. I especially love the look on my brother's face when I stare at him while typing, 'cause he can't figure out how I can do it so fast without looking. Typing is fun. Yeah ... arthritis is gonna suck.

The list could go on forever … my endless supply of energy when playing with kids, my ability to down a case of pop in two days without intestinal complaint, etc. I enjoy being young. It’s fun.

I’m sure that when I’m all white-haired and wrinkled, and looking back on this, I’ll have a good chuckle. Maybe even a snort. I really hope that I still snort when I laugh when I’m old …