I had trouble getting out of bed this morning. My back hurt. So did my knees and ankles – and my neck. My left rotator cuff was feeling a little funky too. I must have been moving pretty slow because my wife told me I was walking around like an old man. I’ve been walking around like this for a couple of weeks now and I have a dumbass waitress at Valle Luna Mexican Restaurant to thank. You see, the family went out for a relaxing dinner a couple of weeks ago and the dumbass waitress passed out the menus she deemed it necessary to grace me with the senior citizen’s menu.
“Really? Really” I asked, “You think I’m a senior citizen???”
“Well, the senior menu is for fifty-five and over.”
“YOU THINK I’M FIFTY-FIVE?”
For the record, I just turned fifty. Now I understood I was on the back nine and all but I had this ego fed vision of myself appearing much younger than fifty. I thought of myself as physically fit, agile, with cat like speed and the ability to hop chain link fences and the like.
I guess I got smacked upside the head with an epiphany and a half, courtesy of the bored waitress with a deadpan delivery, now didn’t I? The truth of the matter seems to be I’m a fifty year old dude who looks fifty – even fifty-five.
And so I’ve been grunting out daily ninety minute workouts at the gym, the result of which has been, according to my lovely wife, to make me appear even older.
One of my students asked why I was moving so slow. I told the class the menu story. They seemed to find humor in my struggle against the inevitable. A sweet little girl in the back of the room asked me if I was aware there was a sizeable bald spot on the back of my head and if I ever considered using the spray on hair product her grandfather uses.
My wife and students don’t seem to do much good helping me deal with the inevitable effects of atrophy, but waitresses with senior citizen’s menu’s are the worst.
Dumbass Valle Luna waitress.
