I'm more and more impressed in my dotage by the constant reminder that everything I had to learn by practicing, requires the practice to continue or I'll lose use of the facility that took a great deal of learning to use. Like walking. For all practical purposes, I forgot for most of my life that i had to learn how to walk, and not only that, but before that I had to learn to roll over, get up on my knees, and crawl first.
The way life is rolling for me at the age of 69 I'm being confronted with having to practice walking to remember how to do it. Literally. I have forgotten how to hop, skip, and jump without problems already. Oh, I can still do those things on a good day, but it takes a while now to get back to normal after I've done such a thing.
Getting up outta bed during the night to go to the bathroom is not a cake walk for me anymore. The effort might go relatively smoothly or I could run into problems because of the awkwardness, and experience bone-rattling pain. In any case, I stutter-step to the bathroom only ten steps away. Not sexy stuff.
I don't exactly look forward to getting up outta bed in the mornings to face my gloomy day because it's gonna hurt. One of the first things I have to do is get downstairs to brew some coffee and boot up my computer. I have to hang on to the hand rails and go down the stairs one step at a time. I have to hang on tight, move one foot down to the next step, and then slowly move the other foot down to the same step. This is the worst part of my day as far as gross movement is concerned. After this ordeal, it seems to get easier to move around during the day.
After I have my coffee, and look to see if there is any e-mail (not usually any more, e-mail seems much less popular as a communicative media) I have to go back up the stairs to shit. I encounter two of the major problems I'm gonna have presently. Standing up from a position where my butt is lower than my knees, and wiping my own ass. Sometimes, I do okay, and other times I have to take a shower to get clean. I can't bend my wrist around to position the toilet paper so very well, but the worst part is the actual wiping, which can hurt so bad I truly wanna cry like a baby.
I live alone. There's no one here to help me or to whine to. There is nobody here to sympathize with my situation nor feel compassion if I were start crying like a baby. I'm not lonely. I always expected to get old alone. How could I have imagined ahead of time that my body would be racked with pain each and every time I moved?
I expect to forget, more and more, that I will forget the things that involved learning and dedicated practice to make happen. I had to learn practically everything I do in the bathroom, except that I learned initially to do it in an outside toilet. I am beginning to realize how embarrassing the performance of my toilette can possibly be.
I still seem mentally alert, but then again, I live alone, so there is no feedback to be able to realize if that's really true or not. Because of what I have difficulty in doing, I have more and more time to do nothing. I can't just sit and watch television, because watching the stuff they create to sell stuff to sexually active people (or wannabes) irritates me beyond measure. Practically always, I know the ending of TV shows before they begin. Instead of getting more and more excited by the hype to come to a conclusion, I get bored and flip channels constantly, then get disgusted because I already know I'm not going to find a program to interest me, and do nothing but fume. What a drag, man.
I don't know why people continue to visit me. I have a habit of telling them in no uncertain fashion how their best-laid plans will never come to fruition, and when they return from their predicted failure, they don't get much sympathy because I already told them their strategy won't work, and why. I think many of my friends are just masochists. Sometime I think I'm a masochist for having friends like them.
I disclaim knowing the truth about anything. I write here to amuse myself and to have something to do. I can't afford professional entertainment. Even cable or dish TV. The arthritis has eased off before. I'm hoping it'll do that again. Very, very soon, if I were to have my choice in the matter. It's getting to the place where I won't be able to squeeze the trigger if I choose suicide.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
