October 7, 2015 Article.

The Old Coot is unbendable.

By Merlin Lessler

Old Man School – Lesson #27 – ELASTICITY (How to cope when you’ve lost it.) It’s the latest in a series of lessons on how to survive as an old coot. It follows Lesson 23 – dealing with your first eye floater, Lesson 24 – going toothless, one broken tooth at a time, Lesson 25 - walking straight while listing left and Lesson 26  – “Ouch’ is a perfect word, get used to using it often.

The loss of elasticity is the one that sneaks up on you. You ignore the phenomena for years and all of a sudden, realize that your flexibility has taken a hike. You took it for granted for 40, 50 or more years, and then one morning, you find you can’t pick up your leg high enough to get your foot into your pant leg without falling over. You have to throw your pants on the floor, poke around with your foot and hope to maneuver it into a leg hole. The first time it happens, it’s like a slap in the face! You wonder, “What happened to the guy who could bend over and touch his toes, who could touch his feet to his forehead, who could do a split? (Well, almost).” As you go through life it doesn’t register that your bendability is slipping away. It’s a long, gradual process, and when it finally dawns on you, it’s too late to do anything about it. Bend over and touch your toes? Not ever again. 

The first time I threw my pants on the floor to get them on, I remembered how I snickered at the old guys in the YMCA who sat down on a bench in the locker room to get dressed. Now, I’m on the bench with them.  And worse, I know I’ll eventually join with my pants on the floor; it will be the only way I can get into them. I just hope I don’t end up spending the day with my pants on backwards. .

The lack of elasticity isn’t limited to the body parts that are bend challenged; it affects your entire physical structure. Skin, for example, that tight, smooth hide you paraded around in for years, sags and droops and you didn’t notice it sliding toward the floor. Why should that be a surprise? Your muscles and tendons did the same thing. Everything went down hill – you end up with waffle neck, old man sag gut, knee globules, ear lobes that brush your shoulders and more, so much more. It’s as though you were made of wax and wandered too close to the fire.

It’s a fright, when you see this inelastic, gone south, image of yourself in the mirror for the first time and not the fake “memory” image you’ve been pretending to see. If you have cataract surgery, you can’t avoid it. The lie becomes obvious the minute the bandages come off. My advice - if your world is cloudy and your eye doctor suggests cataract surgery, don’t do it! Unless the surgical procedure is followed up with grief counseling along with the surgery. You might fall over backwards the first time you pass by a mirror, and with your lack of flexibility, it could be the last thing you see. Ever!