A brief dissertation on growing old, er, older…

We have come to that stage in our lives when we have suddenly realized we are old. O-L-D! Old. That’s right. You read that right… OLD! With a capital “O”!

Now, my wife, God love her… who will no doubt read this, will roll her pretty green eyes, then proceed to berate me and otherwise “confusticate” with me over calling her “old.” It’s OK when I call myself old, but when I lump her in that august group, well, then the kid gloves come off and the verbal boxing gloves get pulled on and off she goes… duking it out with me verbally, of course, about the fact she is still younger than me (which she will, of course, always be…), and just who do I think I am by even broaching that horrible subject anyway!?

By Michael Powell michael.cherryvilleeagle@gmail.com

anyway…).

The sad fact of this whole matter is that it isn’t going to get any better for me, for her, for any of us actually, as that is how God made things: every living thing ages; some faster and more vividly that others, and dare I say it… more VISIBLY than others!

with either the Welsh or Scottish blood, or maybe even what we always called “clean living” back then, which was basically eating mostly unprocessed food (they grew their own then, you see…) and not smoking and/or drinking – too much, that is. Oh, to be sure… there was some smoking and drinking, and many of the men (and one or two of the women) did it in copious and vast amounts but still managed to retain their youthful good looks somehow (I missed the boat on that ‘good looks’ aspect, by the way…).

ancestors and current Powell folk (at least the Kentucky and Tennessee branches of said clan), I am painfully addicted to eating three square meals a day, and not just any meals, mind you! No sir! They have to be your typical southern-type fare, complete with fried everything, swimming in some form of bacon-flavored grease or lard, or whatever, followed by some form of bread, an all washed down with either a soft drink or sweet tea.

don’t you look into cutting back or at least changing your eating habits (and volume!)? You might just lose a few pounds and live a tad longer in the long run!?” And, of course, you’d be right in that statement and claim. No question of it!

Fair enough. She doesn’t look her age while I, on the other hand, look like an ancient, wrinkled frog (at least to myself,

I am not so fortunate as many of my relatives on my dad’s side of the family who really never seemed to age that quickly, though some did seem to break down in many ways when they reached that grand old age of, well… 90, or 100… like my dad’s mother (my grandmother) who reached the ripe old age of 101, but managed to only look like a wizened little elf in a handmade bonnet. It may also have had something to do

Still, we all march toward advanced age and we all try our best to stay as youthful as we are able. However, a curse of the Powell’s (at least my branch of it anyway) is to wind up getting diabetes, or being plagued with it perhaps, as we grow older, and, for many of us (myself included), fatter!

Now, as I pointed out to my wife recently, “older” I can do nothing about, but fatter… well, there’s something that I CAN do something about!

There’s just one problem though. Like all my