Aging Gracefully

There have been signs lately that I’m growing older. Such as my clothes. I was walking through a parking lot on Saturday, when I looked down and took stock of my fashion choices for the day. I was wearing a pair of black flats, and because it was chilly, had decided to wear black, silky socks with them. To make it worse – they were JD’s! I had on a pair of faux jeans, you know the kind that you find at TJ Maxx for $9.99 that are called jeans, but really are more like stretchy blue slacks. Because they’ve been washed about a thousand times, they are just a bit too short, and there was a faint white smudge on the knee from my painting adventures last week. I’d paired them with a blouse I’d purchased at a yard sale which was a bit clingy, despite my Spanx, and to finish off the look I was wearing a thin sweater in my signature gray. Not my best effort.

The only thing that stopped me from turning around and going home was that the parking lot was in front of the Roswell Senior Center, and I was on my way in to play bridge. I was pretty sure my peeps would accept me as I was.

You know another sign of aging? Fear. Old people get freaked out by the darnedest things. When I was leaving bridge on Saturday, I got in the car, (along with Moon and her bff, Jemi) pulled out of my space, and started to try and navigate my way out of the parking lot. The problem was that it was PACKED. There had been so many people trying to park when I first got to the game, that police had been directing people to an overflow lot. The parking lot was a figure eight, and as I got to the middle loop,  I saw mass chaos as people waited for spots to open up. I looked behind me, and since there was only one car between me and the entrance, I decided to just put it in reverse and back out.

Here’s a handy schematic I made for you:

As soon as I started backing up, the one car behind me moved over to the right so that I would have plenty of room to get by. JUST KIDDING! No, she tapped her horn to let me know she was behind me. I ignored her and kept backing up. So she decided to LAY ON THE HORN. Kittens, I’ve learned a lot about old people from playing bridge. Like that they may be mean, but they have fairly poor balance. I’m pretty sure if grandma wanted to fight, I could take her. So I kept backing up. It wasn’t like there was any danger of me hitting her. Even though she refused to move over, I still had PLENTY of room to get by her car. When I got even with her, she gave me the classic, both hands in the air, WTH look, but I ignored her. I am sorry that I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a picture, or at least stop while her window was even with Moon’s and roll down the window just to freak the girls out, but as it was I just smiled and continued on my merry way backwards.

I talked it over with the girls on the way home. We couldn’t figure out what she was so AFRAID of. I was nowhere near her, and if she was really worried, she could have moved her car in the other direction!

But hey, I get it. As I get older, I get more afraid. Even though I rarely leave my house, I’ve been thinking that maybe I should get a weapon of some kind for taking to the grocery store, or walking down the street. I don’t want to carry a gun, for crying out loud, but I did find something that could work.

It’s a STUN CANE that delivers 1.000.000 volts! How perfect is that? JD thought it was a good idea, but after some soul searching, I decided I’d better not get one. It doesn’t seem like something I’d want to introduce to the bridge community.