Indignities of Aging

This probably won't be political ...

Republicans are just the worst, am I right?

Man, getting old sucks.

I'm getting old. It's no secret, hell, I keep whining about it enough that no one around me can forget it.

My knees are shit. Oddly, this pain goes all the way back to little league baseball. I was a catcher for a few years playing ball before I discovered competitive swimming, and, ultimately water polo. Now? Now I just can't squat anymore without getting stuck. Water is easy on the knees, but, alas, I was too late.

My back is shot. I have a birth defect in my spine that I have mostly ignored my whole life. When I tried joining the military, the docs didn't even see it. They DID see the medical records of breaking my neck in 13 places, so, that didn't work out well for me. No, my back is where I not only keep my defect, it's where I carry my stress, I'm told. I've been beaten, battered, and even hit by a couple of cars. Now that I'm older, it hurts all the time. I feel like I've earned this one, to be honest.

Making it through the night without peeing is over. I actually did make it through the night last month without the need to release my night water, and let me tell you, it was a day for celebrating. Bathroom related indignities as they go hand in hand with age are new and exciting, aren't they? Peeing is now an emergency most of the time. It used to be that needing to pee was a process of minutes, now it's all hands on deck, battle stations!

My brain, being unable or unwilling to accept aging, has taken to making me perform immediate tasks, then ambushing me with an emergency Gotta Pee klaxon. Before bed, I'll be unable to fight the impulse to pause the TV, get up, head to the kitchen and start prepping the coffee pot. Two minutes in, and suddenly it's TIME TO PEE. NOW! if I don't hurry… it gets silly. For the first while, I could ignore it until I finished, take my nightly insulin, and then go. No more. Now it's NOW, and no argumentative waiting.

My new favorite is when, having finished my morning (or whenever) constitutional, I have about three minutes and then I have a to pee again.

This sort of thing scares the hell out of me. We used to tease Forrest about how long he took to pee, not knowing he had prostate cancer at 40, and not, as we teased, having aged into enlarged prostate issues faster than the rest of us. I got a colonoscopy as close to my 50th birthday as I could. Spent 45 years without thinking about my prostate, and now I get my PSAs checked about every six months, too. Nothing so easy to learn as someone else's lesson, I guess.

Some things never change, though. I remember an argument with an ex where she told me that my morning pee was a continuous existential dread for her because “that first fart of the day sounds like an angry duck asking a question.” I still have the duck, but I found someone who either doesn't eavesdrop on my morning routine, or doesn't care. It's never a subtle duck, so, my guess is it’s a more mature view that bathroom business is best left unmentioned and abandoned in the bathroom where the business took place.

I've never been comfortable with potty talk. I don't like it. There's a certain reticent indignity about the whole room that I feel more comfortable keeping secret, quiet as possible, and unmentioned. I burn a stick of incense every time I have a seat, so as to keep secret that, like everyone else in the world … you can finish the rest. I am getting old.

Republicans, you see, want to raise the retirement age instead of raising the FICA cap. It's hard enough out here for an aged person to find new work after 50, especially these days. Add the miriad difficulty of the body's betrayal to trying to find work in late middle age and the whole thing is an insult to my aspirations to be a wealthy silver fox.

Republicans also want to torture trans folks with potty stuff. Make them feel shame for existing in a false and lie filled star chamber of bullshit paranoia over problems that don't actually exist.

Clergy, family members, even GOP lawmakers get caught illegally chasing children and, in the case of one Utah REPUBLICAN lawmaker, getting a standing ovation when he resigned in shame. I often wonder if he felt hasty in quitting when his fellow Republicans clapped, and clapped, and clapped for him.

All I know is that when I called him and the Utah GOP caucus out for this insane behavior on my radio show, KSL took away my radio show. Seems pretty par for the conservative course these days, and this was more than 10 years ago.

ASIDE: Sadly, not one voice on my side of the aisle called foul, either. I just had to accept my Best of Utah award for a dead show.

I'm tired all the time, too. This is new. Emotional fatigue is alive and well in my day to day. There are still some issues that set me off and get me yelling, transgender rights issues being the top of that short list, reproductive rights a very close second.

Even in my diminished physical state, I've never hesitated to challenge one of these right wing GOP fear mongers to fight me fair and square in a ring. A proper set up, not a cheap parking lot brawl. This year that attitude ran up against my life long aversion to violence against women, you know, like a Republican isn't.

ASIDE: It was a Utah Republican from Pleasant Grove who passionately preached that spousal rape wasn't a bad thing, because husbands should be able to do whatever they want ‘cause the Bible, or something like that.

Anyway, I can't challenge Kera to fight me in the ring. If I did, and she accepted, I'd just stand there and let her try to beat the shit out of me.

This leaves me with a titanic frustration.

My dad's advice was to never hit women, or men that are a lot smaller than you. Dad's style of upbringing leaves no wiggle room at all. Don't do the thing, he says, and I don't do the thing. Most of the time. Some exceptions may apply, mostly church stuff.

The thing with Kera is: she's lying about and torturing people I love. She even gets all fake tearful when people she calls abominations have the temerity to speak words in her direction. It's quite pathetic to watch. Is she passing bills about clergy needing to report child abuse? Nope. Just the people who want to poop in peace.

Isn't that ultimately what life is all about? A near eternal quest to take a shit in private, without being bothered by Republicans and ignorant dipshits while you're practicing using God's ill-designed waste management gear? Maybe it's not what life is all about, but what a shame that it's where we are.

Everybody - Every Body - poops.

So, if MY angry duck were asking a question, it'd most certainly be “What The Fuck, Kera?”