Bonnie Brown: Gettin' Old Ain't for Sissies!

Gettin’ old ain’t for sissies! This has become my mantra in recent years. As I grow older, one of the most frustrating things I’ve experienced is that my energy level is much lower than it used to be. Correspondingly, I have fewer things to do now that I’m retired so I suppose that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

I used to get up early in the morning. I am definitely a morning person. I loved having a little time to myself before my husband and two sons got up to get ready for work and school. I would get a head start on the day and since I, too, worked full-time, this was a productive time for me. I would also use this time as a chance to visit with my mother via phone. I was always close to my mother and when I moved away, we had frequent (and sometimes lengthy) conversations. This was during the days before unlimited long-distance calling, so these conversations could get pretty expensive if we weren’t careful. I lived for a short time in California (Pacific time zone), and I figured out that I could call my mom who lived in the Eastern time zone to find out what happened that day on our favorite soap opera, Days of our Lives, hours before it aired in California. We had watched “Days” from its debut, so we were pretty fanatic about it. The habit of early-morning phone calls between my mother and me continued until her passing.
On one of the days that I arose early, I decided I would do some ironing. But my ironing board sounded like a thousand cats caterwauling when I put it up. It was awful. So as not to disturb my sleeping family, I decided that I would take the ironing board out to the garage to put it up. I pulled on my robe and proceeded to the garage. I put the ironing board up and decided that while I was there, I’d vacuum out the cars. I was in the middle of this when my husband appeared in the doorway, still half asleep and looking irritated. I suppose I did look a little peculiar in the garage with the ironing board up and bent over in the car in my robe (which was wrong side out). I immediately stopped and looked at him. He said to me in his “professor” voice that my mother was on the phone and could I please explain to her why he didn’t know where his wife was at 5 in the morning.
My early-morning burst of energy also included washing the cars, grocery shopping and hoeing in the garden among other things. I was at the grocery store checking out early one morning when the cashier looked at me rather sheepishly and told me she could not ring up the beer I had on the counter since it was not yet 10 a.m. I was only a little embarrassed, smiled and told her I understood.
I seemed to have limitless get up and go back then. But alas, that is no longer the case. I’m still at my best earlier in the day, but my days now begin later.

I’m so old, I can remember getting through an entire day without taking a picture of anything.

— FunnyOneLiners (@Funnyoneliners) May 25, 2015

There are other things that have changed now that I’m older. I miss our old house, the one in which we raised our children. We lived in the country and enjoyed the lifestyle very much. We lived on Woodson Ridge near Walker Downs who raised Santa Getrudis cattle. I remember one morning I was awakened by a loud mooing. I looked over at my husband who was asleep next to me. And honestly, if his mouth had been opened, I would have bolted from the bed. It turned out that Mr. Downs had separated the babies from the mamas the day before. The babies had gone in search of their mamas but had taken a wrong turn onto our property, specifically outside our bedroom window. While we lived on the Ridge, we chased not only cows but horses and in one instance, a pig named Rosie. How did I know her name? Well, I happened to be outside sweeping out the garage when a truck pulled into the driveway and a man approached asking if I had a rope. It is a well-known fact that with two active boys always getting into things (a true fact, I used to keep the electrical tape in my underwear drawer), I could never keep string around the house, much less a rope. The gentleman told me he was going to “lasso” his pig, Rosie, who he had just seen near our house. Like from an episode of MacGyver, I scanned the area for something resembling a rope and handed off a long, orange extension cord.
Off he went to capture Rosie but before he departed, he asked if I could drive a stick shift. I said I could, and he asked if I could drive his wife home in his truck while he rounded up Rosie. It was quite a sight to see him walking Rosie home.
There are other things I miss now that I’m a woman of a certain age. I miss being able to stay up late and still be functional the next day. I miss being able to drive confidently at night, after dark. I miss my “work families” from my various jobs through the years. I miss the library. I used to go there often. I loved the smells and the promise of finding a good book. Now I can simply download a book to my Kindle, or look up something on the internet. I miss Lucky Buck Night where you and your whole family could get into the drive-in movie for a single dollar. I miss Blockbuster. One could enter the store with a movie in mind, or browse the shelves until you found just the right one. Although my family usually picked the movie we were planning to watch, I was given the chore of going to Blockbuster to pick up the movie. I spent quite a lot of time in there trying to find the title I was looking for. It took me forever! When I told my husband what a difficult time I had finding the title, he looked puzzled and patiently explained the layout of the store. Why didn’t I know the movies were shelved alphabetically?
I miss what I thought were simpler times. Am I deceiving myself that the good old days were really more worry-free? Today, news reports are so readily accessible that I’m overwhelmed. Used to be that local news came the next day via the newspaper; national news was seen once a day in a 30-minute evening news broadcast. Now, there’s constant reporting of the news, and it’s never good news. It’s never ending. My husband refers to the 10 o’clock news as the “crime report.” Was I isolated back then, or was there less crime? It used to be that if someone committed a crime, the individual was not boastful about it, and his family was mortified. That is no longer the case. Bad deeds are often bragged about on social media.
When you stop to think about your “good ol’ days,” just remember that this is your reflection on what were the happy times of your childhood, of your teenage years, your prime. We often polish these memories to fill our need to escape some present-day realities, which is okay. Each generation does this and has done so since the beginning of time, I’m sure.
Perhaps I wasn’t as energetic as I think “back in the day.” And maybe, just maybe, I’m not quite “over the hill” yet.

Bonnie Brown is a retired staff member of the University of Mississippi. She most recently served as Mentoring Coordinator for the Ole Miss Women’s Council for Philanthropy.
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