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.

Milestones of Aging

Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends
(Paul Simon, “Old Friends”)

Age is, of course, relative. We all know this. But still we tend to cling to the convenience of marking our time in years and decades. I had lunch last week with an old (no pun intended) friend who has recently turned 60. On his birthday, his wife asked how it felt to be 60, and he replied, “Pretty much like 59.”

For most of us, the real milestones of aging are not years, but events. Consider my process of growing old, not atypical I expect:

• 50 years: An invitation arrives in the mail to join the AARP. I join and begin taking advantage of hotel discounts and road assistance almost immediately. I still feel healthy and jog three to four miles a day. But something vaguely ominous shimmers on the horizon.
• 52 years: My dermatologist discovers a basal cell carcinoma on my upper right arm. He’s able to dig it out in his office. As he cauterizes it, the smell of burning flesh is pungent, and I can’t get the thought of Joan of Arc burning at the stake from my mind.
• 55 years: I fear I have carpal tunnel syndrome, but am diagnosed with tendonitis of the elbow (“tennis elbow”), and attribute it to shoveling snow. I undergo physical therapy for a few months and improve.
• 58 years: I begin to experience occasional pain in my left knee, sometimes excruciating. X-rays are taken, an MRI, and I’m diagnosed with osteoarthritis. I have several corticosteroid shots. I stop jogging and start walking.
• 58 years: My father dies. My wife and I are on a biking weekend in Wisconsin when we get the call.
• 58 years: Our first grandchild is born, a lovely baby girl. We start a college fund for her, and I worry about living long enough to watch her through it, or at least long enough for her to have some memories of and with me. I recall the many student papers from my composition courses about fond memories of grandparents and hope she’ll have something to write about me if she chooses in her first comp course.
• 59 years: The little and ring fingers on my right hand are curling into the palm, pulled by stiff nodes along the tendons from the fingers to the palm. I can’t use my little finger to type. The diagnosis is Dupuytren’s contracture. I go into the hospital (the first of five times this year) for surgery, which ends up being only partially successful. I adjust my typing method to nine fingers.
• 59 years: My left knee buckles in a hotel parking lot in Chicago. I buy a cane in a drugstore on the trip home. Knee replacement surgery. Months of physical therapy. Two manipulations (trying to force the knee to bend while under anesthetic). After seven months, I haven’t reached my flexibility goal, but I am able to walk recreationally and bike (if still with some pain). The receptionists at the orthopedic clinic don’t have to ask my name anymore when I come in for one of my regular appointments. “Who are you seeing today, J.L.?” is all they ask.
• 61 years: I jump at the chance to take early retirement from teaching, particularly freshman comp. The burnout began some fuzzy number of years ago.
• 61 years: Reading in the AARP magazine that music is something that keeps the mind engaged in retirement, I decide to take out my guitar again, after . . . I don’t know how long. But because of my arthritis, I can only spread my fingers over three frets, rather than the four of the past. As with typing, I’ll have to adjust. But then adjusting is just another way of saying growing old.