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Getting older is kind of like losing socks in the wash
© by Mike Keenan 
Dear Mr. Retired Person,Our teacher gave us another project. We have to write down ten things that change as you get older. I thought you would be great for this because you are so old. Can you help please? Amy, grade five. Dear Amy, Sure, I will help. The first thing that happens, you will not even notice, and I'm not sure why it happens, but as you age, your eye color gets lighter. Strange, eh? Also, you will have to wear glasses. This is compulsory especially if you drive a car. Anybody you see who is over fifty and doesn't wear glasses is either lying about their age or has had corrective laser surgery. Check out Sarah Palin. She wears glasses and is not even near fifty in either age or I.Q. She wears special glasses because she is going rogue. Ask your parents about that. Sarah is hard to explain. Another item involved in aging is bones. There are 206 bones in the adult human body. Children have 300. So, it's like using the washing machine and you notice that a sock is missing after each wash. Same with bones. You come out of the shower, and a bone is missing. Who knows where it has gone. Probably the same place where the socks go. It doesn't take an adult very long to lose 94 bones. Adults also tend to break their bones a lot as they age. Many of us have had bones repaired with all sorts of nuts and bolts that you find in a Home Hardware store. Some get bones replaced. There is a problem with this because strange things happen to the adult body when it's in a hospital. Every year, 2,700 surgical patients return home with metal tools, sponges, and other weird objects left inside them. This makes it very difficult for them to pass security checks at the airport, often suspected of terrorism or drug smuggling. So, as you age and visit the hospital more and more often, chances are that you will either gain some weight or feel strange as a result of these medical mistakes. Next, the longest living cells in the body are brain cells which can live an entire lifetime. Unfortunately, if you have played football or hockey when younger, many of these brain cells were destroyed by violent concussions. My suggestion to you Amy is never take up the so-called sport of boxing. The whole idea in boxing is to destroy the other person's brain cells. There once was a great boxing champion named Mohammed Ali. He would dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Now, he can barely speak. Another thing that happens when you age is that you acquire droopy, dark patches under your eyes. Some women spend fortunes on beauty products that supposedly take them away. Often, people will resort to surgery. If you see a person over fifty who has no wrinkles on his or her face, you can safely guess that they have had surgery. Check out the Stratford Festival's picture of Christopher Plummer on their 2010 program calendar. Christopher is approximately 99 years old and his face looks as smooth as that of a baby. Why do our eyes sag? The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year. That's a lot of work Amy. You would sag too. Unfortunately for men, the muscle called the gluteus maximus starts to resemble the gluteus minimus as they age. My wife, Miriam, thinks that the once hard tissue from my rear end has somehow magically transported itself to my soft abdomen. In 1985, the most popular waist size for men's pants was 32. In 2003, it was 36. Now, the average American male has a waist size of 44 and weighs 285 pounds. (See the movie, Supersize Me, directed by Morgan Spurlock.) For the ladies, a similar increase in body mass involves the thorax area. In 1991, the average bra size in the United States was 34 B. Today it's 36 C. and judging from the way Americans are growing, it will soon be into triple X territory. Hope this helps. |
