Good Lord ageing sucks!

What can we do about it? Well all the lies and exaggerations of Big Pharma and Big Medicine notwithstanding. Nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Not meaning to be an old curmudgeon about this. Of course I’m not. I mean who sets out to be old and miserable but the fact is I got old. I mean what the hell is that! I’m actually in good health far as one can tell these things and I take my assigned medicines. All that aside however the most important medicine I take each and every day is laughter. Not just a passing ‘ ha – ha’ laugh, not just an acknowledging smile, I’m talking about deep, stomach tightening, oxygen fueled laughter. Nothing makes me feel better. And I don’t think I’m alone about this. Most of us as we get older come to understand that, embracing it wherever the opportunity arises.

My wife Mac and I were with friends recently in Deep Bay BC, sharing stories, mostly about our health, as will happen with age. Of the six around the campfire I counted four knee replacements, two hip replacements and the most recent topic of conversation, an ankle replacement. Those of us who had not had replacement surgeries were asking about waiting lists. Sounds a bit grim really and it could be quite depressing if allowed. I mean getting older flat out sucks. But my friends know better and into the story telling about new body parts they injected hilarious, gut busting funny stories. It’s kind of a seniors way of spitting at the Devil.

Our friend Nona perked up.

“I have a mouse.”

“You do not.” Her friends chorused with one voice.

“No, not a real live mouse, I have a mouse tattoo.”

Of course none of us had seen any tattoos on Nona’s body and we’d known her for years, so we were skeptical, if not more than a little intrigued.

“We’ll of course you haven’t.” Nona said, unmistakable mischief in her eyes.

“So where is it?” pressed one of her friends, a wee bit rankled probably on account of she’d known Nona since they were little girls together, “You never told me about a mouse tattoo!”

“We’ll I didn’t think you’d approve.” Nona replied with a straight face.

“Besides, it’s … down there?” she added, another layer of mischief in her voice. It was the oldest euphemism in a story tellers quiver and it didn’t mean ‘Australia’.

“Down where?” It was her friend ‘Debbie with Two B’s’ unable to hide her growing awareness that when Nona said “down there” she meant “down there” adding a confirming directional with her right hand just in case we still didn’t get it.

By now Nona was all in and if her contagious rolling laugh was any indication, she was thoroughly enjoying the discomfort her friends were feeling.

“Here I’ll show you.” and she stood up to unbutton her jeans.

“You can see for yourself.”

Crickets. Silence all around. Then a full multi voiced chorus of laughter, coming in waves as each person caught on, one part “Oh my God she’s not going to pull her … one part Ohhhhhhh!”

“Let me see this mouse” said her friend Jen.

“Sure come over here, you’ll need to look way down to …. you know, ‘down there’.” Jen moved close enough to Nona and bent way over to try and see this tattoo, her head now below Nona’s waist.

“I can’t see a thing” she said.

“Oh for God’s sake. Look closer. It was there this morning when I got dressed. Here use the flashlight on my phone.”

So there it was. A wonderful funny story, told with joy, a gift of laughter for all of us.

“There’s no mouse there.” Jen said as she stood back up returning Nona’s phone.

“Hmm” replied Nona “That’s strange. My pussy must have eaten it.”

Howls of laughter washed over us. Again.

It had everything, this story of Nona’s. Great storytelling, excellent timing and the perfect punchline. And for a few minutes none of us had sore knees or hips or ankles. It was great medicine.

You had a heart attack
I’ve got two bum knees
We don’t wanna live forever
What the f*&# is TikTok?

Looking back it was all worth it
The truth is getting old sucks, but everybody’s doing it.

Bowling for Soup ‘Everybody’s Getting Older’

At our age we’ve all endured tragedy and mind numbing sadness. We’ve all experienced loss, we’ve all had our hearts broken. We’ve learned as we have dug ourselves out from deep deep holes of depression and sadness that we can survive and even flourish and that one of the greatest gifts we have is our sense of humour. It gives us perspective and it gives us laughter and it just feels good when we haven’t been able to feel good for a long, long time. And then we get old and My Lord! if you ever needed a sense of humour it is when you get old. This stuff gets real.

Which brings me to Bill Gates. Now there’s an optimist. He has endless amounts of money and to his credit seems hell bent on doing good things with it but for all of his philanthropy Bill is running short of the currency that really matters. The same currency I’m running out of.

Time.

Bill though, ever the optimist, is investing heavily into research on longevity and there have been some promising developments. Well, if you’re a mouse they would be considered promising but I’m thinking it’s hopeful for humans. Scientists have Benjamin Buttoned mice and reversed the ageing process. Nice. Sign me up. So now Bill and others are hucking huge money at the research, hopeful perhaps a big breakthrough will not come too late.

Now work with me here. Just suppose you could live until say, one hundred and ten, or one hundred and twenty, in equivalent health. Would you want to? For me the answer is simple: In a New York second. Yes! I’m not quite sure what the downside would be. I’d get to live much longer and I’ve already told you how much I love being alive. I would see my grandchildren graduate, get married, have children; the upside is endless. Now all good things come with a downside and doubtless so would living to one hundred and twenty years but capitalism would thrive and medical science would help us along for the ride.

Hey honey I feel a little bit ill.

Sorry to hear that, take a pill.

The little blue pill on the side table?

No, not that one! You are no longer able.

My poor wife. Just imagine her horror at the prospect of an overly ambitious one hundred and ten year old Tony. One supposes skin care products would get a boost.

“Age related wrinkles? Try Botox for your second century. After all you deserve it. BOTOX 100 Plus. It’s What You’ve Been Waiting For.”

Okay, this is getting weird. Time to finish.

We have a summer place in Deep Bay on Vancouver Island. It’s a humble adobe but a magnificent escape for those of us lucky enough to spend our summer months there. Most of our neighbours are seventy plus and if there was a place where humour thrives it is at the Deep Bay RV Park in Bowser BC. Think of ‘Schitt’s Creek meets a seniors seaside park‘. One of our neighbours is Bob Butler. He and his wife Jodi welcomed us with open arms when we first arrived telling us “if the campfire is on, you’re welcome to come over“. Little did we know that Bob and Jodi’s campfire is always on and we have spent many, many hours around that campfire each summer, telling stories and laughing. Always laughing. It feels healthy because it is healthy.

I nicknamed Bob ‘Stand Up’ and for good reason. He loves his pot and he would always stand up around their campfire, all lit up, regaling his guests with tales from his glory years. And he is funny, always cooking something up. Literally. He had a smoker, two barbecues, an outdoor kitchen and pot, lots and lots of pot. In fact, he was a pot smoker from way back, preferring the generational baby boomer distrust of government, always hiding his joints in the palm of his left hand, notwithstanding pot had been legalized years earlier, the burn marks on the palm of his hand the scarred testament.

“Hey Stand Up!”

‘What Tony?”

“You know pot is legal now. You don’t need to hide the joint in the palm of your hand anymore.”

“Yeh Tony, I know” he replied with that ever present Bobby smile, a laugh gathering in his chest, “but I just can’t get used to it.” And out it came, all coiled and ready he laughed out loud. See, here’s the thing. Bob gets it. He understands, quite apart from whatever is going to get him eventually that humour and laughter make a huge difference, every day, to that voyage.

Humour and the laughter that comes with it may not make any difference in how long we live but without any doubt it makes our lives different. I could go on but at some point that would just get tedious for you, if. it has not done so already. Besides if you don’t agree by now you may just be a member of the Lost Tribe of Miserable Old Pricks and lost to my thesis long ago. So it’s time for the last word.

My last word turns out, is not actually my last word at all. It belongs to a great Irish playwright.

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.” George Bernard Shaw

Until then, inevitable as ‘then’ may be I’m going to laugh. Hard.