Gary Chalk
I met someone the other day who I have not seen for many years. We exchanged the usual pleasantries—I sucked in my stomach—and then she said something that caught me off guard, “Gary, the last time I saw you was Y2K. You look great. You have ripened well.”
Ripened well? I have been described many ways, but never has someone said I have ripened well. So, the following morning at breakfast I put the question to my wife, Jan. “Dear, do you think I have ripened well?”
Jan glanced up at me, then she looked back down at her bowl of granola. With a wrinkled dried prune on her spoon she deadpanned, “Compared to what?”
“Jan, thanks for your honesty.”
“Gary, did you want me to say you have more wrinkles than an elephant?”
What constitutes ripening well? Everybody Living Retired—men and women—expect our bodies to change as we age. It begins at our neck. It gets flabby, the skin sags and we develop—OMG!—turkey neck. From there everything heads south like a Canadian snowbird. All the extra skin bulges together as it travels down through the breasts. It picks up steam towards the stomach and hips. The march cannot be stopped! Like molten lava our thighs become fatter. Eventually, everything reconstitutes as fat ankles! They look like the ruins of the Greek columns at the Acropolis.
Another sign we have not ripened well is a decline of our cognitive skills; our sense of logic and reaction. Here’s an example, purely hypothetical, of course this did not happen to me: If you are driving and suddenly swerve to miss a pine tree and your wife screams, “Gary, it was the air freshener hanging from your rear view mirror!” that is a sign you are not ripening well.
There are many more signs men have not ripened well. How about this one? Does your wife confront you at the breakfast table, “When you get up to pee in the middle of the night are you trying to hit the wall?”
Or, what about this one? It is one thing for Living Retired men to meet up with each other at a coffee shop. I do. We natter on and on about our cholesterol levels, our blood pressure. But what’s with our obsession with checking the weather app on our phone every couple of minutes? It’s like we are planning our day around a 20% chance of rain?
Before Living Retired, we had no time for small talk. Now, we skip the drive-through automated teller machine just so we can go inside and chat up the bank teller. We talk about the weather, the grandkids, and other important things while the line of customers behind us grows.
Body maintenance becomes ‘a thing.’ Your joints pop. Your back aches. Your knees throb. And that is before you get out of bed!
Have you ripened well when you get out of the car after a 3-minute drive to the gas station and stand at the car door, slowly stretching before you can walk?
Here is my advice to ripen well. Tell anyone who will listen that you don’t have wrinkles; they are laugh lines.
Living Retired is written by humor columnist Gary Chalk.