RE: (Humor) 'Not-Not' List for Aging...let's spend our time laughing, not looking in the mirror

‘Not-Not’ List for Aging

By way of recap, to celebrate my love of lists and humor applied to just about anything, even aging – ugh, yucky, pooey – I’ve created several “Not Not” lists in the past.

(Two have appeared in THE UNION newspaper. See ‘not-not’ list for romance and ‘not-not’ list for fitness.)

These “Not Not” lists operate somewhat like a mathematical equation, whereby multiplying two negatives renders a positive.

Because I’ve addressed wide-ranging, hard-hitting issues of social, economic, and cultural import in my columns, it makes sense that I would move on to this powder keg of politically charged topics – aging.

Interestingly enough, the most controversial element I encountered when compiling this particular list was whether to spell “ageing” with an “e” or whether to utilize the more compact version of “aging” sans the “e.”

Since I enjoy time saving almost as much as I do list making, I went with the latter. (Two t’s, not two d’s, in case you’re reading this out loud to someone.)

It’s Not That It’s Not Time to Think About Aging When:

1. You call your kids by the names of your dogs…repeatedly. Some of these are even dogs that have already crossed over Rainbow Bridge;

2. You graduated from college some year preceding the inception of the band, Bon Jovi;

3. You know someone who attended Woodstock and/or you would have attended, but you couldn’t drive because you have a late birthday;

4. You remember what a freedom shirt (female) was and a Nehru jacket (male) was and, no, they aren’t coming back in style;

5. You’re on your third or more witnessing of the remake for the song Big Yellow Taxi (Don’t it always seem, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone);

6. You are more interested in developing your stock portfolio than your biceps;

7. You find yourself looking at old pictures of yourself exclaiming, “Dang, I was hot!”

8. You find your wife/husband/friends/talking parrot looking at old pictures of you exclaiming, “Dang, you were hot!”

9. Retirement communities have graduated from sending you generic materials featuring smiling geriatric models to providing you with personalized recommendations from friends and specific unit numbers accompanied by their respective floor plans;

10. Your children are asking you how much equity you have in your home and when you think the market might rebound;

11. You realize updating your Will means removing the part where your 30-year-old-plus-some-odd-years children will not be taken care of by their long-deceased grandparents;

12. You’re the same age as your grandparent was of the same gender when s/he died and you thought they’d had a “good run” at the time;

13. You realize you’ve been married longer than you lived at home with your family of origin – times two;

14. Term life insurance companies keep sending you materials saying “Hurry!”;

15. Your children keep sending you materials about term life insurance and retirement facilities saying “Hurry!”;

16. Long conversations with verbose folks are visualized in your head as an actuarial table in the shape of an hourglass, the sands of time amassing a sand dune squarely on top of diminished life expectancy;

17. You’ve begun wondering if there’s something to this whole playing bridge, pinochle thing and you find yourself buying cards with cats on them;

18. Golf courses are suddenly the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen in nature and you find yourself trying on visors as you take practice swings in front of the mirror;

19. You wonder why those all-weather, perky, pink flamingoes have gotten such a bum rap because nothing spruces up a front lawn as nicely as a flock of flamingoes playing freeze tag;

20. When people ask how old you are, you insist on making them guess, querying back with “How old do I look?” sometimes adding “whippersnapper.”