The 5 worst things about getting older

PJ Media, by John Hawkins. Another listicle. PJ Media is starting to look like Buzzfeed.

Okay. But first, let's guess. Obviously eyesight. Oh man. I just now had one of those flashback things happen again and this is a super clear strong one, like woosh, total transportation back into a tucked memory as I live it all over again. I'm in it. I'm in the backseat of a car, an old one such as a 59 Chevy, brown inside, new at the time. I'm looking at distant billboards and seeing the tiny text but I cannot read it because I don't know how to read. And the colors all around are a marvel to behold and I know that is due to my incredible child eyesight. I knew then that this superpower fades. I knew very young I must appreciate this. Remember this kaleidoscope of primary color, revel in it, because only children have such brilliant new eyeballs. So I did. I locked in that memory. And now here it is.

I was a philosophical little f'k'r even back then.

And hearing. Of course.

Oh, I suppose strength, agility, speed and balance and the like. Those are my guesses.

At thirty a friend of mine had a vanity license plate 02B19.

Another friend said at a club how great it would be to have granted a switch back to age twenty-one. He said that to somebody else. I overheard it. Later I told him I wouldn't like that at all.

It happened one time in a dream. A powerful dream that had me thankful upon waking.

I woke up in the dream inside someone else's body. I realized something was wrong riding up an escalator inside a shopping / entertainment mall. My hair in the front covered my eye and I flicked it back. My hair slipped over my eye again and annoyed I flipped it back again. Hey! This isn't my hair. My hair doesn't do that. I have more sense than allow my hair to obscure my eyes. I'm in someone else's body! And it came as a shock. A catastrophe. I'm with a pack of young males. We're cruising the mall, as we do.

Turns out one guy is my older brother and the other two are friends, both brothers. But I don't know any of them. That situation really did happen in real life. At one point our neighbors had two boys the same ages as myself and my brother. Together we were trouble from my point of view. They were trouble, I was innocent bystander sucked into trouble situations. But we never hung out at a mall. They were into exploring.

In the dream I freaked out. I had to get back to my older body. I worked too hard, too long, too much trial and effort to give up any of those years. This was my primary urgency.

And that does it with these OBE breathing and meditation exercises. I didn't realize it would happen like this. What if I'm stuck? I'll have to relive a full decade and with different parents. I'll have to do those ten years all over again. No. I am unwilling to do that.

Like a maniac I urged my brother to go home. We must go home. (He must show me where home is.)

I see this family's house. Now I'm inside it. I march up the steps, there are clothes and toys and electronics all over the place, it's a very messy home, much more untidy than my own family home. I go up the stairs much like my real parents' stomp down the second floor hallway and enter my parent's very large bedroom and speak with urgency to my parents in bed who are shocked that their son is speaking to them as an adult in adult language and not as their son. They know I'm not their son almost immediately. It's no trouble convincing them of the unintended switch. I tell the father, "You must put an end to all electronic surveillance." The dad says that's not possible. Everything is built in. I tell him, "You invite your own surveillance upon yourself and your family by inviting the electronics that contain it." He said, there is no other alternative. It's that or it's nothing. I insist, "Then it's nothing! Turn off that television."  He said it doesn't turn off. "Unplug that goddamn television it's spying on you." He said, "It doesn't unplug." I go "Bullshit. I walk up to the television in their bedroom and yank the cord out of the wall." The father and mother are both shocked by their son's new behavior and because that cord yanking alerts the authorities. Soon the authorities will descend on them. We argue. Snap. I wake up. Presumably that youngster was back in his body. Presumably, likewise, he got to know what an older body is like.

So having just dreamed that dream in real life I said to the man who wanted to be twenty-one that I do not want that. Not one bit. That violates my entire experience. I earned my age.  It's mine. And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I'm unwilling to do all that work over again.

He said, "Well, we mean it would be great to keep all our knowledge but have our young bodies back."

"Oh. Well, that's ridiculous. I wouldn't want my younger body again. I earned this one, and all that it means. I'm okay with getting old. I like it.

So what's John Hawkins' list?

1. Physical deterioration. See? Knew it. What else could it be? He got glasses at age twelve. Recently he injured his shoulder and that would heal faster when he was younger.

2. Loss. Oh, that's a good one. I didn't think of that. Yes, Very good entry. I outlived so many good  people it's not even funny. I'm having survivors syndrome over here.

3. Looking old. Ha ha ha. Dude, you should try juicing.

4. Achieving your dreams and not achieving your dreams. He goes on about this. I'm not sympathetic. This summer an ordinary dummkopf friend told me he discovered the key to happiness and satisfaction; adjust your attitude, lower your expectations. That was a tremendous insight for him. It shows he was dealing with the same thing.

5) Dwindling excitement. Basically, he talks about becoming jaded. Things become less intoxicating. Eh. For myself, travel and change were intoxicating. Until they became a major pain in the beau-tox. What I find intoxicating are the very high number of things that are funny. I laugh so hard at some simple stupid things that I have to stop what I'm doing and just be taken over like an epileptic seizure except a lot less damaging and exhausting. I literally roll around the place laughing helplessly over videos of things children say or something that a puppy does. That I can still laugh at things people say is a surprise to me. The salesman in videos I've been watching cracked me up without his trying, talking about using the pulp from papaya, "For the ladies, as a facial. Or for some of the guys." At that point he lifts up his arm and pantomimes a limp wrist in the poorest impersonation of a gay man that I've ever seen, the worst sign language possible, and I thought I was breaking my ribs laughing. He tried to discretely signal "gay" without saying it, without being offensive but did it so poorly so offensively to gays, to straights, to pantomime artists, to sign language speakers, that it was hilarious.

Getting old is fantastic. A journey. And it allows you to truly marvel at all the fantastic things that young people do.