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The Cruel Truth
By Bullshirt

I woke up the other morning with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, swung my legs over the side of the bed and greeted the day with my typical affirmation: "Good morning world! I'm so happy to be here."Ä

That's when the alarm clock went off and the dream ended.

Reality was a slow shuffle to the kitchen for my daily transfusion of caffeine and oatmeal. I don't eat oatmeal because it tastes good. I eat it because I'm guaranteed something akin to regularity. Raisin Bran does a good job too, but I have to eat two bowls of it to get the proper amount of relief sought.

Bleary-eyed, I tried to concentrate on the morning comic pages as I slowly came awake. That's when I felt alert enough to tackle the New York Times crossword puzzle that my paper is kind enough to include. I gave up on 16-Across when it asked for a ten letter word for storefront (Mercantile. Who the hell calls a store a mercantile anymore?).

After a shower and a close inspection of my follicles, I found more gray hairs than I felt I should have. The goatee looked distinguished with its small patch on the corner of my chin, but the white shit at my temples is making gradual progress up to my crown. I remembered CVS was having a sale on Just For Men.

My office beckoned, so I walked downstairs and I heard: CRACK, CRACK!!  My knees were creaking like a rusty barn hinge.  All the way down.

Shit.

I pulled my office chair up to the computer terminal, logged on to my e-mail, checked my schedule on Outlook and started making plans. There was a slight kink in my neck from sleeping wrong. As I sat there trying to work it out, it hit me: I'm getting older.

When the FUCK did this happen? Did I go to sleep one night a vital young man and wake up with one foot in the grave and the other on a roller skate? No. It was a gradual process but all of the evidence hit me at once.

• It takes longer for me to get started in the morning.

• It takes less time to wind down.

• I have to be careful what I eat and in what quantity.

• I sometimes need a nap in the afternoon if I should have anything planned for the evening in order to keep up.

• Or even stay up.

• Just a scant three years ago, I was willingly going to bluegrass festivals and sleeping in a tent (when I slept at all) with the aid of an air mattress. I would stay up until all hours of the night so as not to miss any of the jam sessions, crash around 6:00 in the morning for a couple of hours, make breakfast and start all over. This year, I broke camp two days early and left at midnight.

• I used to think nothing of judging chili cook-offs, ate jalape¿o peppers right off the plant and washed it down with massive quantities of beer. Now I can only eat chili once a year and hate myself for a week. The beer has been replaced with ice tea.

• My waist size has gone from the quite studly twenty-nine inches to a positively disgusting thirty-four. Medium-size shirts have given way to the dreaded "L" for the accommodation of a burgeoning gut I swear wasn't there last winter.

• Remember the gray hair I was complaining about earlier? Well, that ain't the only location you'll find it.

• Even though I wear glasses to correct poor vision, my arms suddenly need another six inches of length for me to read something clearly.

• I drive slower, wear my seat belt all the time, complain about the lack of respect the younger generation has when they don't use turn signals and suffer fools with less and less tolerance.

• The majority of my friends are married with children and no longer have social lives. On the off chance they're lucky enough to find a sitter our evenings have to be finished by 11:00. A night out with the boys has taken on the meaning of sitting on the porch talking about how great we remember it.

• I can remember the summer Brothers In Arms came out and still find it thoroughly entertaining from front to back. Then again good music is timeless, so I don't guess that counts.

Try being single at my age. Man; if y'all think it's tough to find a date now may God help you if you're that way in your late 30's. All the good ones are taken and those that aren't are hiding in plain view. And as much I may fantasize about dating the hot little co-ed cheerleader, the reality is I couldn't relate to her if I tried.

But the pisser, the pisser to all of this is I don't feel old! I'm at that weird phase in life where the revelations mount with astounding clarity but the mind still thinks it's able to chew up a ten-penny nail and spit out a roll of barbed wire.

It's enough to keep me awake at night, and if I wasn't so damn sleepy every night at 10:30 I'd probably sit up and stew about it. In the meantime, I'll continue to start my day like I do every day: With a bowl of oatmeal and waiting for the bran to kick in.

Bullshirt

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