One Thing or Another: Age Is Not Just a Number

Narration provided by Wondervox.

By Mark McNease

Welcome back to the One Thing or Another column: A lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

“Age is just a number!” How many times have we heard this uttered with grating cheer, as if getting older was just a figment of someone else’s imagination. To this way of thinking, I’m not really real, I’m a number-defying sprite whose bones, sinews, and brain aren’t in their mid-60s, but somewhere preferable, perhaps 40. I have the luxury of pretending to be any age but the one I am. I’ve always cringed when I heard this, and I always will.

Age is not just a number. Age is empirical. Age is a measurement—how many times the Earth has traveled around the sun, with me on the bridge watching it all speed by. Age is the number of years my knees have carried my fluctuating weight, and how many mornings my eyes have opened to a new day. Age is the truth, and I’m not someone who wants to hide from it with platitudes, euphemisms, and make-believe.

I’m a facts guy, and I always have been. Being creative and taking license with my fiction or my projects does not mean mistaking them for reality. Writing a 50-year-old character does not make me 50 years old. And as much as I might someday want age to be just a number, one I can ignore when my 75- or 80-year-old body is experiencing the very real manifestations of a very real age, it is a falsehood I tell myself to avoid a process that is both natural and frightening.

Don’t let anyone tell you they don’t fear old age, for it’s twin is death. Turning 65 gave me the absolute pleasure of getting my Medicare card and starting to make doctors appointments that I’d put off since January, wanting to avoid the high deductible on my insurance. But it was also a flashing road sign: this way lie the final chapters. The Third Act, after which the only curtain call will be people remembering me.

There’s nothing morose about bringing up death, a subject our culture is even more averse to than aging. We’re told to age gracefully, but no one tells us to die gracefully. Aging can be prettified with free weights, displays of stamina, and cosmetics. Death does not have time for any of that. Death does not play games, or pretend that it is only a number.

So fear not! Be as old or as young as you are. Let age be a glorious number, an honor conferred on us when we make it that far. Some day the number won’t rise anymore, and we will have all those wonderful years to look back on before the spotlight dims. Take your bows now.

One Thing or Another: The First 28

One Thing or Another is a collection of humor columns that take a look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all. From our culture’s refusal to use the word ‘old,’ to the sometimes comical consequences of aging in body and mind, if not always in spirit. Collected from the author’s personal columns, these short essays will make you chuckle, recognize yourself, and sometimes grimace at the not-always-funny price we pay for simply staying alive.