They See Me Rollin’…

They hatin’.

Well, these days, I don’t so much roll as ooze. Oh well, I guess it happens to

all of us eventually. One day you’re immortal, invincible, dynamic—in other words, young—and the next you’re wondering why you walked into this room for the third time.

Seriously, is it really necessary for everything to go south at once? Is this just God’s sense of humor at work? First the back goes, then the knees (or vice versa), then the short-term memory, then the long-term memory, then the eyesight, the waistline, the hairline, the dew line, the fishing line…what was I saying? Oh yeah, it sucks getting old.

Turn on the TV, and you’re confronted with depictions of active middle-aged people, turning grey to be sure, but still prancing in the surf, hiking the AT, doing the tango in some exotic foreign city, and generally acting like teenagers, all because they’ve found the fountain of youth in some new drug, vitamin, diet, or cell phone plan.

Yeah, right.

What people that age are really doing, is falling asleep in front of the TV at 7:00 and going to bed by 9:00. They get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom every two and half hours, forget what they were doing, and lose their glasses on the top of their heads. I should know!

S’ok though. The trick to dealing with aging and its accompanying discomforts and inconveniences, is having a sense of humor about it all.

So next time you see a commercial for a wonder-diet featuring twenty-somethings who magically lost 10 pounds eating bark and cloud berries, smile and remind yourself, that they too will soon know what it’s like to look down and not see the floor.

And if you can’t remember if you closed the garage door when you’re only a block away from the house, remind yourself that you’ll also magically begin remembering people, places, and happy times from the distant past, lost to memory for decades. It’s God’s way of easing the transition and giving you a little perspective.

An awful lot goes into making a life, good and bad, but time has a way of taking the sting out of the bad, while casting a rosier glow on the good. God is merciful.

Don’t worry if the kids don’t understand why you’re wearing an onion on your belt.