Old As Dirt

I was going through the checkout line at Hy-Vee this afternoon. A cheerful, pleasant-looking man in front of me, dressed in khakis, a red polo shirt, balding with gray hair, about my age, was buying a copy of Sports Illustrated, chatting amicably with the bagboy. They clearly knew one another. As the cheerful, pleasant-looking man about my age walked away, the bagboy turned to the checkout girl and said, “That guy was my counselor in high school. He’s old as dirt.” I hadn’t heard that expression in years. But I’d never heard it in reference to someone not much older than me, if older at all. Old as dirt? Is that what I am? Do my students refer to me that way? “My English professor is old as dirt.”

We typically mark age by years, particularly decades. The age of 40 is probably the first time we hear something along the lines of (accompanied by a chuckle) “So old man . . . ,” and certainly by 50 (“the big Five-O”). By 60 it turns more to lines like “Well, you’re not dead yet . . .” or “You want me to get you some prune juice?” But as I grow old (and older) my aging is marked not by birthdays and decades but by the simple day-to-day “old as dirt” moments of reminder. And they’re not shocking or sad, just reminders of the reality of passing time.