Fifty-Five!
I know I’m fifty-five cuz I managed to crawl out of my hole long enough to get a checkup and the receptionist at the doctor’s office asked my age and, after a minor pause because it had been a while since anybody had shown any interest in me at all, I said “Well, let’s see.”
I looked up, aware I was standing in front someone who was obviously much younger. I pulled my old-man wallet out of the back pocket of my old man jeans. I was probably emitting some old man musk under that bright fluorescent bulb above me bouncing light off the dome of my bare, old man scalp. I flipped open my wallet and looked at my driver’s license, the photo of an old man looking back at me, and I checked the DOB, twice. “Well I guess I’m fifty-five.”
I didn’t make any clever, funny, self-deprecating remarks. What would be the point? I just said it and tried not to sigh too deep after. And now I know, she knows and we all know how old I am. Fifty-fucken-five.
And I say bring it.
Bring me the squinted gaze and cantankerous rage that come with it. Bring me the grizzled beard and chiseled wrinkles that come with it. Bring me the back-in-my-day fairytales of hardships, friendships, cooking jobs on cruise ships that come with it. See if I care. Cuz tell you the truth, I don’t mind that the Millennials have taken over. I don’t mind their worthier-than-thou existence, their spoon-fed privilege, their Ritalin-infused self-importance, their duck-liver sized sense of entitlement, their hipster hairdos and mystical tattoos, or their artisanal farm-to-table sneakers. As long as they stop pretending to like that awful music!
“So,” asks the receptionist, “What’s the problem today?”
Today? I need to tell her everything that’s happened to me! I need to tell her my history, everywhere I’ve been, all the things I’ve done, how I ended up here. I need to tell her about the time I first got my heart broken and the time I was robbed and all the times I quit before I got fired. I need to tell her about the first time I hurt my shoulder . . . “that was back in, oh, ’87 over in the last century, it was, during a Berkeley Warehouse League game as I threw the ball from deep leftfield where I was patrolling back then, the throw went past the cutoff man, past the runner rounding third and heading home, past the waiting catcher, past the ump, past the high backstop behind home plate. That ball flew! I had a cannon! The old greybeard geezers from shipping said so. But I felt something pop. I was twenty-six. More than half my lifetime ago. Been bothering me ever since.” That’s how I wanted to explain what the problem was today.
“I’m sore,” is what I said.
My shoulder, my elbow, my knee, my back. Like the voice of my disapproving father, my pains are always there now, in the background, gnawing at me, reminding me of something I don’t wanna be reminded of.
I should do some deep knee bends. I need to do some push-ups. I need to take an old man yoga class. But I’d look ridiculous doing yoga. I’d look like an old man trying to do yoga. I’d look like my old man did when I caught him trying to do deep knee bends that one morning when I was a teenager old enough to laugh at him without mercy.
With his soft belly, his bald head, his wide plain white jockey briefs. Ridiculous, squatting up and down. Ridiculous with his brows furrowed, in his leather slippers, his mean grunts with each awkward squat. I’d never let my teenage boys catch me doing that. It would be worse because I don’t wear underwear. I’d be a naked old man. It would be a tragic image burnt into the minds of my poor boys if they were ever to walk into my bathroom and catch me doing that.
Perhaps pajamas, or at least underwear, perhaps that’s a good first step. Before starting anything else. Before signing up for Hot Yoga. Before getting limber. I’ll take it slow. After all, I am fifty-five.