The Unseen Gray Hair

This blog is about aging. But as I was thinking about a title, I realized I wanted to shy away from using a boring or typical title like “The Signs of Aging,” or “You Know You’re Old When” (seriously, that’s the best I could come up with so far). But then I decided that I actually wanted you to read today’s blog, especially since I haven’t made a guest appearance on my own site since May.

Let me start off with this interesting anecdote so that you will know where I’m going with this (or at least follow along my rabbit-hole journey). A few weeks ago, I received a cryptic text as I was sitting in my car during lunch: “Hey! I’m depressed.” This was completed with a smiley face emoticon, so I knew it was serious, especially since this person rarely ever initiates texts with me; we now relegate our communication to friendly ribbing on Facebook.

Out of bemused concern, I replied to his text. Then impatient person that I am, when my depressed pal didn’t reply quickly enough, I called, only to repeat my text: “Hey! Whassa matter?”

His reply: “I found a gray hair—down there.”

I was as sensitive as I could be as I guffawed loudly in my car—at least the windows were up. But even through my laughter, I was now bemused and weirdly flattered, although I’m not entirely certain that I shouldn’t be insulted…but that’s another topic for another entry in the wonderfully distant future. It’s easy enough to guess the reason for my bemusement: who does that!? Hence, the flattery that even after all these years, this man would feel comfortable enough to relate that story to me...well, I won’t dwell on that either.

But I will say that I did promise him that he would be included in my next blog which, as you see, is a few weeks from its intended deadline. To add to his private admission, he nicely posted another sign of aging very publicly on Facebook, so I perhaps don’t have to feel flattered because this man has no real issue with full disclosure. The subject of his Facebook post: the prostate exam. To paraphrase, he lamented that he wasn’t even offered a movie and some popcorn by the doctor who…well, I hope you what goes on in prostate exams.

But our ridiculous conversations via text and Facebook spurred me to pursue a topic I’d been meaning to discuss for time anyway, and you guessed it: I mean some obscure signs that old age is creeping up.

My grandma always said that we adults once and children twice. Here’s the way I see it: I figure that the average biological age of adulthood starts at around 15 and ends somewhere around the mid-40s, give or take a few years on either end. How did I come up with this answer? The beginning of adulthood has to be somewhere around a post-puberty age, when voices change, hair starts growing in place other than the head, and when there’s a general idea about the height of a person. True, many boys tend to still be growing by this age, but this would only support my theory in terms of saying that men have a shorter span of adulthood than women (guys, please limit your disagreement posts to 100 words or less). Regardless of the actual age, in adulthood, people enjoy relative freedom: the future is just some vague distance away. We’re in control of our own destiny and for the most part, barring any over imbibing, all of over bodily functions.

But after 40, or even more accurately, approaching 40, things start to unravel. Muscles start to weaken, joints and cartilage both expand and get less pliable, and fluids start to dry up. All of this works in conjunction to turn that once virile adult body into a non-coordinated mass of skeleton and loose tissue. And depending on how much or little a person exercises, the process progresses either slowly or at a rapid clip.

The first signs are gentle. Maybe you notice that you can’t read words as closely as you once could, and you find yourself extending your arm back a little. But the sign that gets me is the change in bathroom habits. Once upon a time in adulthood, you find you could hold in your urine a little longer before you got to the destination (yes, it all comes back to the bathroom with me) and when you got there, you knew that you were in there for number 1 and number 1 only. However, what I’ve discovered is that muscles weaken around your bladder (in men it’s around the prostate and in women the Kegels) and that when you do get to your destination, you can sometimes be surprised about the bodily function that occurs. In the past year, I’ve noticed that my bathroom trips are most like Forrest Gump’s description of chocolates, or at the risk of being totally vulgar, you just never know when you’re going to get a chocolate-colored surprise. This is especially mollifying to me as a person who is skeptical at best about frequenting public bathrooms (those who’ve read my “Potty People In the House” know that I have my own particular bathroom issues and they’ve only exacerbated over the years). I’m confronting with the fact that foods that I used to be able to easily digest now send my system on a Rebel Yell roller coaster ride that results in a quick unanticipated disappearance.

It is not at all a comforting thought to know that I am once again entering my childhood state, although this time in reverse chronological order. One day, I’ll delve into a more serious adaptation of what this state is, but for now I’ll just leave you with this.

That same guy referenced at the beginning of this entry posted a pic with a two-year gap, and had on the same shoes, and possibly the same hat. Talk about a sign of getting old. Maybe he’s turning into that Texas gym teacher who wore practically the same outfit every year for picture day for forty years.