MILD ANNOYANCES OF LATER LIFE

Many people suffer greatly today from poverty, starvation, homelessness, even in the USA. They don't know where their next meal is coming from or whether there will be a roof over their heads tomorrow. It has been said that lightening doesn't strike in the same place twice so I may be safe. I struggled and suffered through those problems when I was young.

I now worry about the toilet paper roll running out, forcing a trip to the basement to replace it, or worse, find the last roll has been used up after descending the stairs. Paper towels run a second in that race, as well. My worries are apt to be more about paying my bills on time ( it is against my very soul to pay interest on a charge). Once my problem had been which bill is going to give me the most grief or charge the most interest because I can't pay them all this month! I worry about whether I will be able to eat all the food I bought, when I mistakenly went grocery shopping while I was hungry (against my own rule). I dislike throwing food out that was bought fresh but is no longer edible due to my poor planning. Why does this bother me? Does it matter whether it gets thrown out or that I eat what my body neither wants nor needs? Of course not, but my mother's admonitions (which I ignored through most of my childhood) are stored in my long term memory bank, and though she has been dead for over 20 years, her voice still lives in there. So much for long term storage in my brain.

When I was very little, I guess I was a bit precocious. People would see this 3 or 4 year old, chubby little girl speaking her mind on every subject, freely, (a habit retained to this very day) and say, "Oh, isn't she cute!?" Now I am a 'senior-senior' and am around middle aged people who look at each other after they have met me and say, "Isn't she cute!" Now the phrase strikes me like fingernails on a blackboard. No one who knows me would describe me as 'cute'. I'm called cute because I am apparently an oddly, precocious, old lady who likes computers, because I write a blog, still work, don't wear house-dresses or aprons, keep up with lots in the world, and still love to learn....an oddity in their view of what I should be. I think I'm expected to be tired and retired!

Because of my Mediterranean genes with somewhat unwrinkled skin (and that I never smoked), I am usually presumed to be younger than my birth date; people expect me to be much more active than my old bones care to pretend. However, I guess if I am being referred to as 'cute' by ANYONE, I must have come full circle in life. What's next?

Second childhood is simply when your short term memory stops working and you are left with memories only of your past. That seems useful, as when a grandson has a school paper to write and is asked to interview someone who lived through WWII, like a grandparent. I was able to recall rationing much more clearly than I was aware of in the 40s! No wonder Grandma Moses took up painting in her 80's. It was all there, clearly, on that black or white board in her head, for nearly total recall. It is rather fun to have images, long forgotten, popping back up in my head clearly again. It is like a head full of old movies. When the projection stops, I shall be no more.