Birthdays used to be a really big deal.
I figure it’s because back when I was a kid we didn’t have that many of them, a handful at best. They were special.
Now, like gum, we have enough for everybody and birthdays become just another day. Still special to a degree, but not the event they used to be. Birthdays nowadays are days you stop and go, oh yeah, it’s my birthday, then move on to the next item on your checklist.
I’ve got 55 birthdays. I’m the double nickel. That’s a lot of candles.
I’m also officially a senior. I can’t officially react with outrage anymore when I get the Life Alert solicitation phone call. “You don’t want to be alone in the event of an emergency,” the friendly lady on the phone would tell me. “What if you fall?”
They don’t know how many times I actually fall, or do something stupid that would require the pressing of the Life Alert button. Those Life Alert representatives and I would be on a first name basis. I can hear the conversation now.
“Dan… you can’t keep pressing the button.”
“But it’s an emergency.”
“Being lonely does not qualify as an emergency.”
“I’m not really lonely because I really don’t like people all that much. I’m bored.”
“Neither is being bored an emergency.”
“But I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
“Dan… you fell off the couch. That doesn’t qualify even as a fall really. It’s more like rolling over.”
Getting Life Alert would give me that false sense of careless confidence. I’d stop paying attention to things like how many steps I have left to descend, and given my chronic ADD I’d already be heading off for the kitchen, yet I’d still have four or five steps still to go.
Those aren’t falls so much as step-skiing.
I’ve done that a lot. You skid down a half a dozen or so steps, not really flying and not really falling with style. You just end up at the bottom not really sure how you got there.
I did that down a flight of about 20 concrete steps holding two big canvas bags of radio equipment. I didn’t fall per se, but instead rode the two canvas bags down those steps like a makeshift bobsled. I felt very Olympian.
Being 55 now, I’ve become that curmudgeonly old man that everybody crosses the street to avoid because somewhere in the conversation he’ll ask you to pull his finger.
I’m not quite into the whole “Pull My Finger” gag because there is a line drawn somewhere in the sand designating what is or isn’t good taste, and while I often smudge that line to a nearly indiscernible smear, I am aware of my boundaries.
I’m old. I have white hair, and I mean really white hair. It’s been suggested on more than one occasion that I grow a beard and play Santa Claus. Imagine me playing Santa Claus. Not pretty.
I don’t like crowds, remember? And here would be a crowd strung down to JC Penney’s, with kids attached, all here to see me. The humanity of it, I couldn’t stand the attention.
All that smiling and being friendly … my face would hurt. Or it would freeze that way.
What would I look like with a smile permanently frozen on my face? I’d look happy…
And we can’t have that. People would think something was wrong.
And call Life Alert.