Micturition as lifestyle.

Getting old is something everyone wants to do but no-one wants to happen. In a couple of months I'll be 65, which I consider to be the beginning of late middle age. I don't think about it much, though, especially after we had all the mirrors removed from our house. That first glance in the morning was getting to be too much of a shock.

I'm sure that almost everyone has the same reaction. You get up one day and look in a mirror and think, "How the heck did *that* happen?" You're looking at a wrinkled, sagging face with various spots and bumps, and you just know that it really isn't yours... but it is. You might think you're still a kid, but the forensic evidence suggests otherwise.

I'm not afraid of dying. It's living that scares me more, especially as my life-o-dometer creeps higher and higher. The worst part is that family and friends become ill more often and more seriously, and their number begins to decline more rapidly. It would also be frightening, if I let myself think about it, to become disabled because of a stroke or Alzheimer's disease and not be able to escape.

But what bothers me most is what's happening now - my body is beginning to let me down in the most annoying ways. I am, of course, weaker and slower, which I expected, with the plus side that I don't care very much. The achy and creaky and cracky parts are still minor. But every year brings more indignities, not the least of which is that certain valves are not as reliable as they were not very long ago.

There are ways to deal with such things, including products that you can pretend you're buying for someone else. It's just annoying to have to resort to those solutions, which soon become more important than knowing that a sub-3-hour marathon is now forever beyond your grasp.