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It used to take my wife and me fifteen minutes to get out of the car because we were busy making goo-goo eyes at each other. Now it takes us fifteen minutes because we're old. Sometimes my wife will get home from work at five-thirty, but she won't make it into the house until a quarter to eight.
It just takes longer. There are things to lift. Body parts, like arms and legs, need the help of the other body parts to get where they're going. There's the cane that the doctor recommended for the bad knee that has to be recovered from under the seat (the cane, not the knee), and then you remember it's in the trunk. Once you make the long journey to the trunk of the car, and overcome all the obstacles on the way, you realize that the cane isn't in the trunk; you left it your kid's car the other day. The speedy and lithe Spiderman-like movements you once possessed have been replaced by the slow and wobbly movements of that infamous superhero, Sammy the Slug, who you saw in a black-and-white cartoon years ago that no one else remembers. Or did you just imagine that? Who knows? Who cares? There are things to be done on the way into the house, distracting things that use up time. There's the mail to check, plants to be watered, and laundry to be shuffled around (not washed, mind you, it just needs to be moved). Halfway to the house, you wonder, where's my cane? You go back and look for it. My wife has reported that the simple process of getting dressed, putting on makeup, doing her hair, and going downstairs, now takes a lot more time than it used to. One time she went to pluck her eyebrows and she missed Christmas. Because of this, she is considering taking shortcuts in her morning ritual, shortcuts like going back to bed and saying "forget it." Accidentally omitting steps in the process is also an acceptable shortcut, but there are limits to that. If you're in the store and forget you've put on makeup, you can fake it. Not so when you're forgotten your pants. Usually, though, we'll let each other know when that happens. But hey, sometimes it's good for laughs. When we leave for work or go places, anything left in the upstairs part of the house is considered a casualty of war. We're not going back up for it. It's a goner. We're leaving it behind. "I left my purse upstairs," my wife said one day. I did the math. It would take roughly one hour and twenty-five minutes to recover it. "That's okay," I told her. "I have some change. We can barter with people. You don't need your driver's license. I can drive." Which leads me to the next point… I used to grow impatient with the elderly who drove in front of me at single-digit speeds and wonder what they were thinking. Now I know. They're thinking, where did those houses come from? When were those built? Wasn't it twenty minutes ago that that business center was an orange grove? Boy, I sure would like some lemonade. What is that honking noise behind me? Why does that young man who just drove past look so angry? You know, some carrot cake would go really good with that lemonade. What a beautiful day it is. That's what they were thinking. That's what I'm thinking. Someone, somewhere, has sped up time so that it zips by faster than a roadrunner on amphetamines. There's only one way to compensate, and that's to slow down, look around, and take your time. Does it help? I don't know. You may not be one of the blurs - those people rushing by like a humming bird on three cups of coffee - and you may not remember that your cane is actually in the closet, but you know where you are. You're blissfully driving the wrong way down a one-way street, enjoying the view. |
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