on aging, barrels and bubble wrap

When I went to the post office Friday I found a pretty pink envelope addressed to me and it was emblazoned with the words, a Gift for Vonda Keon. Now I love a gift as much as anyone. So I eagerly tore into the envelope to see what the gift was. It was 50% off a hearing aid at a hearing clinic in Oxford. I was insulted! I may be 55 but there is nothing wrong with my hearing. Ask my kids, I can hear and identify the most minute sounds and conversations.

So what is the deal? Are we automatically in some AGE related databank that spits out cards for hearing test discounts, or scooter chairs or Depends? I started asking around and found out that several people I know have gotten similar mail and it all started at the age of 50.

I know that I don’t give into the aging process easily. Just because I am 55 doesn’t mean that I am ready to turn into a sedentary vegetable. Retirement is a long way off for me in spite of what my daughters may think. I will probably working until I just drop one day.

We all know that we are getting older. Each day most of us are waking up to the sounds of snap crackle and pop and I am not talking about a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal. I’m talking about the sounds our aging joints are starting to make. Some days I wake up and wonder how I am going to make it across the room. But after a few minutes of moving around and a hot cup of coffee, things start to loosen up a bit and I don’t hear those popping and creaking sounds any longer.

Age is a funny thing. I prefer it to the alternative; not getting older. But it seems like it leaps upon us when its least expected. Such as a few years back, the Spring of 2004 to be exact, I was still home schooling several children in my downstairs study. One day we were studying Newton’s Laws of Motion and I decided that we would do some practical experiments to prove them. One of the experiments involved a 55 gallon plastic barrel and rolling down the hill in my side yard.

I watched those kids crawl into the barrel and go rolling down the hill and then pop out of it whooping and hollering and having the best time. It really did look like a lot of fun. Finally I could not stand it any longer and after a bit of coaxing from the kids, I folded my then 50 year old fat self into that barrel. DJ, Kyle, Hunter and Corey gave that barrel a good shove and there I was trapped inside a white plastic barrel tumbling down a hill that seemed to go on forever.

I heard a loud pop when the barrel came to a sudden stop at the base of a large oak tree on the edge of my mothers’ yard. When the boys started pulling me out of the barrel I realized that something wasn’t quite right. Every bone in my body hurt and I couldn’t take a deep breath. I limped around and sat pretty straight for a couple of days before I finally gave in and went to see Dr. Bruce. After laughing at my account of the great barrel roll he told me I had broken a rib. Then he said there was nothing he could do for it except tell me to take Tylenol for pain and to stay out of barrels. And THEN he had the audacity to tell me that I wasn’t a spring chicken any longer. I would have hit him if I wasn’t hurting so bad at the time.

To add insult to injury, some anonymous friend thought it would be really funny to send me a huge roll of bubble wrap so that I might wrap myself in that before my next trip in the barrel. Ha ha! If I thought that would work I would try it but my husband has cut my barrels in half to make my container gardens. So my barrel rolling days are over and I will never know if the bubble wrap would work.

I CAN hear you laughing you know.