On Top of the Hill
So. Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of forty, Eileene announced that I should join her as she consults our new family doctor over her Bell’s Palsy (from which, blessedly, she has already made an almost-complete recovery), to get a checkup. I didn’t think it entirely necessary, since I’d had a physical just a year ago, when what I thought was a second kidney stone proved mercifully to be just a bad case of piles, but not until after I had befuddled three or four different medical facilities and needed a physical as part of the process of un-befuddling them. That physical found nothing wrong with me—apart from the abdominal pain, of course—and I feel well. Still, to satisfy Eileene, and to try out the new doctor, and out of a recognition that annual physicals are supposed to be the sensible way to avoid serious problems, I went.
Turns out there’s nothing wrong with me, unless the pending blood test produces radically different results from the one I had last year, which doesn’t seem likely. In fact, I’m apparently doing great for my age. Blood pressure 120/80, which is fair, pulse of 60, which is good for anyone, and it’s terrific given my tepid exercise regimen of a half-hour walk most days. (The pulse of 80 to 88 that I register when I give blood seems more plausible, but apparently it only comes in so high because I have always just finished a two-mile walk carrying a laptop and library books when I do so.) Regular EKG, no chest blockage, weight acceptable for my height—although I would still like to shed the slight but undeniable spare tire I’ve developed in the past ten years.
All of which has proven surprisingly heartwarming. I didn’t expect much of either fanfare or anxiety over turning forty, nor did I experience much. But I hadn’t reckoned on how the natural joke of attributing every momentary lapse—forgetting some movie star’s name, dropping silverware, sweating during my walk, that sort of thing—to the onset of old age would make me self-conscious of advancing age.
Let me hasten to point out that I drop silverware all the time, and have all my life. I sweat on my recent walks because it is over 90°F and wretchedly humid. My memory is decaying noticably from the Rain Man-like steel trap it was in my childhood, but the particular case of forgetting a movie star’s name has more to do with not being interested in learning it in the first place than actual memory loss. Nonetheless, chuckling at everything as a sign of age insidiously makes one actually feel as though aging, unnaturally fast.
It’s nice to have hard evidence to the contrary, in place of mere wishful thinking.