Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll contemplates ANOTHER TRIP AROUND THE SUN. She writes:

October 4th, 2024

Oh my goodness. As my wonderful Astronaut friend Jim always says on my birthday, “Congrats on another trip around the sun.” And as my late Daddy often said, “Any day above ground is a good day.”

And so next week I turn 78. So much for my childhood certainty that I would die spectacularly and young, some kind of vague fantasy of a heroine fending off Evil Guys, saving many people until I succumbed. Perhaps the grateful residents of my small Minnesota town would erect a statue in my memory. A very short statue. That eventually, of course, would be torn down and a Land Acknowledgement erected in its place.

Ah, a fourth grader needs SOMETHING to think about on the nine-block walk home, kicking the same rock for several blocks in the Fall, slogging through snowbanks in the winter when once again she has lost her mittens, splashing through puddles in the late Spring thaw!

Not for nothing did my favorite college professor once write on an essay, “You have an active and well-trained imagination!” How did I get that? Same way you get to Carnegie Hall: “Practice, practice, practice.”

So that whole “dying young” thing didn’t work out. And now I face extremely late middle age. Why I thought that I would be the ONE person in all of human history to be exempt from the general deterioration of the body I cannot say. Perhaps because I have always been in robust health and always considered strong “for a girl.”

I could jump rope literally all day. And did. We had hilarious, aspirational little rhymes that we jumped to: “Cinderella dressed in yella, went upstairs to kill her fella. How many kisses did she give? One, two, three, four…” and so forth into the high triple digits. What a skank that Cinderella was!

Not too long ago, on impulse, I bought a jump rope. On the first try, I knocked my water glass off the counter on the down-sweep of the rope, jumped four times, and collapsed into a chair. The jump rope is in a corner with the weighted hula hoop which I could never do even once. I gave the little Rebounder trampoline to my housekeeper for her grandkids.

Moving from childhood to the teen years, in 1960 of course, the young and beautiful John Fitzgerald Kennedy became President and in addition to urging “Ahsk not what your country can do for you, but what YOU can do for your country,” which would make him a right-wing Ultra-MAGA-head today, he also popularized the notion of 50-mile hikes! I’m not making this up. And poor Mrs. Obama just tried to get fat kids to “Play 60,” to move around for an hour. An HOUR? Good Lord. It might take half THAT long just to get to the pond where we were going to ice-skate for the whole rest of the afternoon! And then walk home. Kids, today! Feh.

Some boys from our High School were alleged to have DONE that 50-mile hike. And long before “feminism” was a stupid word, Bonnie and Heather, Loretta and Margaret and I decided that if the boys could do it, so could we. Talk about your future Marvel Girl Bosses! Maybe Ladyhawke can remember whose idea it was so I could shoot them.

Here’s what great shape we were in what with being slender, playing outside all day, and even having regular Phy Ed classes: without any training, without proper shoes, we RAN the first seven miles! It got a little harder after that, in fact very very hard as our first stop from Alexandria was going to be Sauk Centre, which was 25 miles away.

After a brief meal in Sauk Centre we headed out again. A few miles from Sauk Centre, Bonnie and Heather’s sainted mother showed up in her station wagon to take us home. Bonnie, Heather and Loretta (who discovered she had very flat feet…) gave up and went, but Margaret and I decided we would be able to finish the hike back to Alexandria. One problem beside that everything hurt, even our hair, was that it got very dark. Again, just a few miles from Alexandria, Mrs. B appeared, saw us slogging in agony along the side of a major highway, and rescued us.

So we didn’t actually make it the full 50, but I think we did somewhere around 38 or 40, which is still kind of astonishing. Mostly on sheer guts and relentless determination – qualities that would serve me well much later in standup comedy. Heck, we got to go on KXRA Radio and talk about the experience. It was a small town and our accomplishment had preceded us. I could just barely walk into the studio.

And now? If you were to see me climb out of my deep bathtub (which I do not recommend at all), you would see that I look like a bomb-defuser approaching an unidentified device. Very very carefully, firmly gripping the side, one leg first, then the other, the bathmat secured with Velcro.

I do not bound out of bed. In fact, no matter what I am doing, there is no more “bounding” in my world, only very careful stepping. I get out of our high King bed by turning onto my stomach and dropping my legs over the side. Like many Geezer-Americans, I put on my undies sitting DOWN because of some unfortunate incidents in which my toe got caught in the leg opening and I almost crashed to the carpet. Holy Humiliation, Batman!

Would that it were ONLY physical deterioration, but of course, our brains are not quite as sharp as they used to be, either. Though I do have an email friend named Don who is 87 and is as articulate as anyone I have ever known. He has lost not a single step mentally. So hope springs eternal…

I think I have mentioned before (see, I also don’t always remember WHAT I have mentioned in over 500 columns) that once when Mama was sick of cooking in her late 80s I stood in my tiny crummy kitchen in Minnesota with one oven and four burners and about two feet of counter space and made 15 different entrees in one long afternoon. I packed them into 60 small labeled food savers so that Mama wouldn’t have to cook for two months. At that point she and Daddy ate so little, they could split a hot dog – not a joke! She pronounced it the greatest gift she had ever received. Now I have read several articles that warn against seniors doing much of any “multi-tasking.” FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS.

My dear friend Tracy and I both keep notebooks filled with words which we have been unable to bring to mind. Weird, odd words like “Chevy Silverado” and “Hibiscus” and “snapdragon.” To my certain knowledge neither of us has been forced to say, “You know the thing…” but I fear that day is just around the bend. That was the one thing I could sympathize with when Biden was still occasionally allowed to whisper or yell in public.

So are there any GOOD parts to being 78? Oh, you betcha. For example, in our 30s we were poor as dirt and had a $50 battery stolen out of our used car while we were at the movies and it was a MAJOR budget-buster to replace it. Now, thieves could steal my whole car and, while I would be very upset, I could afford to replace it if necessary. So, there’s that…

Another plus is that through this wacky volunteer job I have made hundreds of new friends who enrich my life immeasurably. Also, I wear what I want at all times, spend what I want on small treats that make me happy, and will never wear pantyhose again in this lifetime. Or any other lifetime. I will be very surprised if there are pantyhose in Heaven. The Talmud certainly doesn’t mention them. But, if it had, the Sages would have disagreed with each other for many pages.

And only very rarely do I do ANYTHING that I don’t WANT to do! So, neener, neener, youngun’s who still have JOBS! You are undoubtedly CUTER than I am, and FITTER than I am, but you are not more FREE!

Next year will be the last year in my 70s. And the only year that both my siblings and I, the first-born, nine years older than the baby, will all be in our 70s. Yikes!

When my walking partner, The Paranoid Texan, turned 80, he very much enjoyed saying “I’m 80; I’m a pirate.” (say it fast — Aye, matey – haha). So I have that to look forward to. I hope to torture HIM for a full year. Stay tuned.