Getting old all in the mind ... and legs ... and ...

Do you know what’s the worst thing about growing old?

Well, besides growing the spare tire around the midriff.

Or seeing those moles spring up overnight.

Come to think of it, I can’t forget the fact that since getting old, bending over to pick up something has become an engineering project. I have to factor in weights and balance, compute distance and speed, analyze cost-efficiency and finally decide it’s not worth the effort.

Which reminds me of the stiff joints. I often wonder if the body, after a certain age, discontinues the production of WD-40.

And then there’s flatulence. Never underestimate the significance of flatulence.

Now, what was I saying? Oh yes, the worst thing about growing old.

Did I mention that growing old means never having to say you’re starving? Seriously, old people can get by on table scraps left behind by grands and great-grands.

I remember as a young man eating enough food to make those guys at the Coney Island hot dog eating championships look like teenage girls at a debutante ball. You know, politely picking a toothpick-spiked hors d'oeuvre and playing with it for 30 minutes.

Once upon a time, I could eat Mt. Mitchell-sized mounds of mashed potatoes, wolf down a whole meatloaf like it was one of those grocery store samples in tiny cups offered by little old ladies, and quaff sweet tea by the gallons. Then I was ready for dessert — a freezer full of ice cream. 

Boy, those were the days. I’d stuff myself to near rupture and an hour later be back for more. If there had been all-you-can-eat buffet bars, they would have locked the doors and hanged the “Closed” sign when they saw me coming.

Back then, my metabolism took off like the Concorde on a flight from JFK to Heathrow. But alas, my super-gastronomic plane has crashed. 

Now I can eat a pea and my stomach swells up like it’s holding a watermelon. That’s OK, though. In six hours, I’ll be myself again (with a little help from the pink stuff).

Wait, what was the question? Oh yeah, what’s the worst thing about growing old.

Hold on, I’m getting around to it. We old guys are a bit slow, after all.

Let me see, the worst thing about growing old …

Oh yeah. I remember. And no, it’s not losing the memory. Sometimes forgetting is a good thing.

What’s worst about growing old is when those little hairs that used to be stationed above the ears have redeployed. 

Lord knows my pate is nearly slick. What few strands remain up there have to be shaved, otherwise they stick straight up. If left to their own devices, my top hairs would make me look electrified, Einstein-like.

The rest, I’ve determined, have left the mountaintop to reside on the face of the cliff. Some take up residence in the caves and ledges of my ears. I tip my barber just for trimming my auricular canals.

But there’s one hair that’s particularly aggravating to me. It’s my nose pointer, so called because it grows on the very tip of my shnoz.

Sometimes I’ll get a glimpse of it when I’m shaving. I’ve tried using tweezers to pluck it off, but it tends to slip through the tweeze.

Therefore, I have to resort to grabbing it between the nails of my forefinger and thumb. It’s a delicate operation, I’m here to tell you.

After several failed attempts, I finally look and no longer see the rascal. I could use my magnifying glass (another factor of old age) but fear that I’d see the thing still lurking on my nose like a unicorn.

It goes away for a spell, not unlike a stray dog that’s found a new source of bones. Then it reappears, resembling a rhino horn, taunting me in the mirror.

I had a nightmare about my nose pointer. I was at my doctor’s office and he spotted the filament peering at him from my snout.

“Let me take care of that for you,” Doc said. In my dream, he left the office momentarily and came back with a chainsaw.

“You‘ll just feel a pinprick” were the last words I heard.

Larry Penkava is a writer for Randolph Hub. Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com.