Hi,
I have a vivid memory of walking alone when I was much younger, just thinking and talking to myself. I did that a lot back then. I was born a year after World War II ended, and I think I was about ten years old then, so this must have been in the mid-1950’s. For some reason I was thinking about the year 2000, calculating what my age would be at the millennium.
Fifty-four? That’s so old, I thought, wondering if I would even be alive then. I obviously did make it that far, and beyond. I had my eightieth birthday a few months ago.
So, if you’re wondering what it’s like to be eighty, the answer is: About the same, and also very different. Aging is gradual, so if I look at myself in a mirror, I just see me. When I get up in the morning, I know my joints are going to creak and ache, just like they did the day before, so it doesn’t seem unusual to feel that happening when I walk down the hall. It wouldn’t be difficult for me to play a character who was my age, because I am eighty. Anyone doing King Lear?
Minay and I, having been actors for a sizable chunk of our lives, have often discussed how to portray a character who is older than the actor is. When I was teaching middle school drama, most of my students, out of necessity, were playing someone older than they were. At the first rehearsals, if their character was (let’s say) fifty, many of them would bend at the waist and shuffle unsteadily across the stage, maybe carrying a pretend cane. After explaining to them that the physical signs of aging (unless the playwright had given that character some particular infirmity) are rarely that pronounced, they would adjust their movements to something subtler. If they were playing someone who was eighty or so, though, a slightly bent over posture and a marginal shuffle might have been fine.
Minay and I did agree on one characteristic that becomes more pronounced as most people age. We call it the middle age sigh. When someone sits down or stands up, they often make noises, like grunts, sighs, or exhaling noises. Those noises can happen at any age, but they get more pronounced as it becomes more difficult to stand or sit. I’m happy to report that, even at eighty, I haven’t deteriorated to the point where I move like my former students did, but I have slowed down a bit, and I do grunt a little most of the time when I stand up.
Having said that, I feel fairly good about my health at the moment. If you’ve followed this blog for a while you know that I have been plagued with a lot of medical issues over the past few years, some minor, some serious, but I’m definitely functional at the moment (with a few caveats). Check the Medical and Health categories on the blog if you want more details. The main issue that affects me every day is arthritis. I have had problems with it for years now, and it’s ever present (nearly every joint in my body aches, but my wrists are what slow me down the most). I could treat the pain and swelling with medications, but over the past few years I’ve discovered that I don’t really need them. While I had A-Fib (from April 2021 to February 2026), I was on blood thinners to prevent the A-Fib causing a stroke. During that time, I couldn’t take any NSAIDs (like ibuprofen, aspirin, or naproxen) for pain. Tylenol isn’t an NSAID, but I’m violently allergic to it, so I just had to do without. I found it wasn’t so bad. Sure, I ached, but it was tolerable. Now, even though the A-Fib is gone and I’m not on blood thinners anymore (just one low-dose aspirin each morning), I still have only taken ibuprofen a couple of times in the last seven months.
I’ve been digressing. My wrists. I have no problem typing. I have reasonable grip strength in both of my hands. But the pain in my wrists is worse than just an ache. Fortunately, I don’t notice it unless I try to do something that needs some wrist force (like opening a new jar of pickles, or picking up anything that weighs more than a pound or so). If I’m doing anything worse than that I do have some Velcro wrist wraps that secure the joints fairly well, but I still can’t do anything like push ups or chin ups or move heavy furniture, etc. I do work out three days a week, mostly core workouts, a lot of isometrics, and some strength training with stretch bands. All of that is limited to what my wrists will let me do.
Another thing, which I’m sure is also related to my arthritis, is that I used to be 6′ 1.” Now I’m 5′ 8.” The padding between most of my vertebrae (all of my lumbar vertebrae, L5 up through L1; and more than half of my thoracic vertebrae, T12 up through T5) is gone. My back usually hurts a lot first thing in the morning, but after I’ve been up for fifteen minutes or so, and moved around a bit, the pain goes away (without drugs).
I’ll add one final stupid human trick before wrapping everything up. I, despite all of that, have really good balance. I can stand on one leg (without wobbling) for a minute or more, while I’m bending at the waist and moving my other leg and my arms in various directions.
How many eighty-year-olds can do that?
To sum this mess up. Yes, I’m old. It’s disconcerting to see obituaries for people who are younger than I am (it brings mortality into a slightly sharper focus), but I still manage to move around fairly well, still drive, still run errands, still sleep through the night without making trips to the bathroom, and my brain is still chugging along like it always has. Despite everything, I have seen no indications that I will be leaving this mortal coil anytime soon. Ninety, here we come!
The next post will be about postal delivery problems.
See you then,
Michael
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