You Are As Old As You Feel

A study in the New York Times has confirmed what I suspected. You are as young as you feel. Researchers took a bunch of men in their seventies and eighties and put them back in an environment where they felt young again. The entire world was turned back to their time when they were young men. And when they came out after a week they were more spry, sharper, more with it in every way. Hmmm...

When I was in college I knew a guy who came back after a divorce and a bad job. He looked at that time like he was in his thirties when in fact he was probably just twenty seven. After two years of college he looked to be in his early twenties. Living the college life again had turned back the clock for him. Certainly we see this time and time again. People who look and act old are old. Whereas people who see themselves as young, feel young and a lot of times look younger.

They are now doing a study with cancer patients. The mind body connection is a lot more powerful than medical science has let on. The patients are all being turned back to a time when they were cancer free and are being surrounded by shows and movies of that era. It all begs a really interesting question. How much of aging is our mind telling out bodies how old we are?

It makes you wonder.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Age Attacks

Just had my first age attack. Went to a dinner and the man having it demanded to know my age. I told him. He didn't believe me. Come on now you are older than that. No. I am not I told him. He said. Now I know you are older than that because I know I am a lot younger than you. Nope. That is my age. Still he would not give it  up and muttered, well you look older. And he was not done yet. Dinner was  enjoyable and by the end all seemed well. But as I was walking out the door he said, now, come on...how old are you really? 

In the car driving home I realized I had just suffered my first age attack. But really, it was my second.  I was at another friends for dinner when a man started commenting on my shoes. Nun Bush I told him when he asked what kind they were. In fact I had just bought them and they were basically Doc Martin ripoffs. What kind of soles do they have? Are they soft soles? He demanded. I had no idea I said, but I offered up my soles and he  nodded. I thought so. Later,  I realized what he had been saying...old people have to wear soft soled shoes.

Lets face it the youth culture has done no one any favors. "Hope I die before I get old." Boomers invented it and now they are stuck with it. And you may think well what is the big deal in these situations. In a way they are small potatoes but the truth is people of a certain age want to make damn sure you are aging right there with them. Worse, they want to find your Achilles heel. Chronology is not age. Age is a matter of how you are decaying and at what rate. Some of us decay more slowly than others. Some of us decay at an accelerated rate. But people sniff something if you do not seem to be showing the outward signs of age.

But there are people who are obsessed and who feel old and demand you feel old too. It is sad and this is just the beginning. But I really do believe you are as old as you feel. If you feel old then you probably are. But does it really matter? Really? There is some of "you see you are just like us in the end."  But the truth is the old people were old when they were young and young people will stay young until they croak.

No matter what kind of shoes you wear.

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...the American Dream Upside Down
 

What if We Didnt Keep Track of Our Age

Been feeling something heavy lately. Oh yeah. My birthday. Funny how that goes from when you were a kid and you were all about it to carrying this heavy piece of sludge. Yeah. Another year and all that means and purports. Look we aren't wine. We are not getting better. But isn't the whole digit thing what really brings us down? Wouldn't we be better off as an arrow shot from nothing to nothing with no one measuring the arc? I mean, really,what is age but a way for other people to get a handle on you.

The old people love it. I don't mean the old people chronologically, I mean the old people. You know the people who started talking about being old when they were twenty. They love being old. They love talking about their back or the feet or their sight or their private parts. They were the ones who started going to bed in college at ten o'clock and talking about the "kids" staying up. They really take pleasure in aging and nailing all the people who stayed up all night and then went jogging in the morning.

The old people send you those cards. You know. Hey, sorry to hear your penis just fell off. Guess age gets everyone eventually Ha Ha. And they comment on those kids (thirty somethings) who are habitually doing foolish things. Sometimes they call each other mom and dad. But imagine if these same people never knew their own age. They would still act old but they couldn't point to you and go. Ha! Your the same age as me! You're old! They would have no idea.

Imagine that. If you felt young then you would be young. In fact you wouldn't have any idea how to age because you would have no idea how old you were. So if you felt like acting twenty your whole life then that is what you should be. Why shouldn't you be twenty to the day you die. Or if you wanted to be sixty you could be sixty. Right up to the day you kicked. No more obnoxious cards. No more obnoxious cakes. No  more disingenuous people saying, oh how do you feel now that you are blah blah.

No. I think I'm going to go for that. Eighteen. Cool age. Guess I'll stay there. Until I decide I want to be nineteen.

www.billhazelgrove.com

The Sword of Age

In this country it is all about those two numbers that correspond to that weird date on your birth certificate where you left the cosmos and started your life on the planet earth. And from that day on the bastards started tracking you. They  just had to know how many years had passed since the day that nurse spanked you on the ass and you screamed out in protest because you had just left this nice warm dark place and you intuited that from here on out it was every man or woman for him or herself.

And so you tooled along and went along with the birthday parties where they made this big deal about this number and gave you presents and cake and ice cream and you were down with it because it all worked in your favor and who cared about a little number anyway? Then the little number started to grow and the birthdays changed. Not so many presents or cake and ice cream ,but still everyone wanted to always know what that number was. In fact it was the first question out of a lot of peoples mouth a lot of time.

And then somewhere it started to become this thing around your neck. People didn't seem to care about your birthday at all anymore, just the little number. And you noticed people used the little number against you especially if their number was smaller. And the weird thing was that people always guessed your number about ten years off. Thinking your number was ten years light. But they always persisted and had to know...really what is your number...how old are you really?

And then you realized at at point that number was a sword. They couldn't get you any way else. People a lot dumber than you, slower, uglier, still wanted to know that number. And so you start to lie to them. Just to piss them off. And they would look dismayed. But i thought you were...nope. Not that number, this number. Really? Oh yeah. My number is less than yours. And you leave them there wondering, staring at you and you think to yourself, fuck em.

I mean, what's in a number, really?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man...funniest novel since Straight Man...Chicago Sun Tiimes

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

You have to love our boomer inheritance. If you watch David Letterman then you know a standard question of his for his older guests is how old are you? Does it matter? Very much to the boomers who coined don't trust anyone over thirty and of course the famous Who line, "hope I die before I get old." The people who brought us the youth culture of course are reinventing themselves and yes the new fifty is the old forty and so forth. But the real irony of the Boomer youth culture which has become a colossal pain in the $#@#@ for everyone is that they are ageists. Age is still their yardstick. David Letterman had Clint Eastwood on the other night. Clint is a very cool guy, funny, affable, very self deprecating. But then David, smug in his twenty years younger, let's fly...."So, Clint, how old are you?" Clint pauses then tells him his age and David shakes his head and the audience applauds. So, the question is, why ask? Well people are interested in other people's age. Bull. Did anyone ask Humphrey Bogart or Frank Sinatra or Clark Gable how old they were? I don't think I ever saw Carson ask anyone how old they were. That would be because there was an adult culture then. People were allowed to be adults. The hilarious thing about the youth culture is everyone is old now because you have twelve year olds becoming rock stars. That moves the bar down pretty far and those old rockers of twenty nine are grinning down at those sunny pubescent faces of the latest Hanson twins. You really can't win. What's really behind the whole age thing anyway? It's a derivative roll out from the generation that said Fyou to all the institutions and put the entire world into two camps: who is cool and who isn't. Simply put, if you are old then you are uncool. If you are young you get an automatic entrance into the cool camp. As long as David Letterman has octogenarians on his show then he and Paul Schaeffer can stay in the cool camp. I suppose the problem will be when Dave hits eighty and he has to start digging up people who are hundred. But everyone wants to be on television and Dave will still be able to cackle...."man, one hundred...are you old!"

http://www.billhazelgrove.com