Groaning, Creaking and Popping

[Julie Klein]

As I celebrate another birthday yesterday, it made me wonder, exactly when did I begin groaning when I get up from a chair?  When did I start hearing popping and creaking noises when I move?  Let me say up front, I am grateful that I’ve lived as long as I have.  Many people don’t make it to my age – like one of my sisters who died at only 62.  It is an odd thing, but over the past few years, it seems that most conversations I have with family and friends lead into our health issues.  We all have them once we reach a “certain” age.  Sharing our medical problems with others certainly doesn’t ease the pain or improve the condition.  And yet, it seems nearly all “seasoned” citizens talk about and compare their various ailments. I am not old, and yet when it comes to all the warnings we hear about in medication commercials, I am considered part of the “elderly.”  Aren’t elderly people sitting in their rocking chairs on the front porch?  The general concept of “old” has changed since I was a child.  I remember my grandmother as always being old, and yet when I do the math, she was really only in her 60’s when I was a child.  I know that the older I get, the younger “my age” seems to me.  I no longer look at a 70-year-old man as an “old man.”  Thanks in part to modern medicine, but even more than that, “older” people today are more active for much longer than previous generations.  I think that attitude has a lot to do with it.  I am part of the Baby Boomer generation, and we are all at or near Medicare age.  Isn’t that for old people? Well, I for one am grateful I have reached another birthday.  With all my aches and pains that come as a “side effect” of aging, I will take them all.  I am not planning to go “anywhere” soon.