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Best of Lee Pitts: Time shrinks, and so will you

Have you ever noticed that the older you get, the smaller things become? The print in the newspaper gets more minuscule and harder to read with each passing birthday. Nights get shorter as the length of the time you can sleep uninterrupted is shortened by more frequent trips to the bathroom.

Researchers have even found that as males get older, their brains tend to shrivel in size, although, for some strange reason female brains do not. But, every woman knows that – they didn’t need a scientist to confirm it.

Even the packaging we all come wrapped in shrinks as we mature. Skin is stretched so thin that veins pop up through the surface and bald spots explode out the top. Mirrors and elevators don’t seem to be made as wide as they used to be. As gravity overpowers time and space, people grow shorter, muscles atrophy and the only thing that gets bigger is your belly.

Is it just me, or are pants sizes getting smaller?

Eventually, your motor skills will digress to that of a baby. You will be dressed in disposable diapers and remain vertical only by grabbing on to things.

As one gets older, menu choices are more restricted. When you were a kid, the world was your oyster, or ice cream sundae or anything your parents would let you eat. But now if it tastes good, you can’t have it.

Your bill of fare is limited to foods that are easy to chew or are on the Senior Citizens’ menu. Vegetables cause gas, desserts are fattening and spicy foods cause heartburn. Or was that a heart attack?

The physical size of the world shrinks with each new day. Closets and the garage don’t have as much room anymore, crammed to overflowing with stuff you’ve spent a lifetime collecting. Ditto the mailbox, jammed full with junk mail from funeral homes, herbal constipation remedies, estate planners and the AARP. The only good news is that the life insurance companies have stopped bothering you.

And when you get really old, your actual living space is compressed into one small room in a rest home that your kids picked out for you. But don’t take it so seriously, because this situation is not permanent. It too shall pass ... when you do.

As you ripen, your horizons are diminished because there is a lot less of your future to worry about. You have less room for mistakes. Old age comes at a really bad time, just when you have some of the answers to life and a lot of good memories to reminisce about. But then your memory starts to fade.

Your social calendar is crammed into fewer hours of the day due to time lost from napping. There really are fewer hours in the day.
As time shrinks, so does your list of options and possibilities. Your goals change; merely to wake up in the morning is a big enough challenge. You go from wanting to conquer the world to merely surviving it.

You may have always wanted to be someone when you grew up, but now that you are who you are, it’s too late to be anybody else. You simply don’t have the drive or the desire to start over.
Your list of things “to do” gets shorter each year. Not because you did them, but because you don’t have the energy anymore. There is less peer pressure with each friend’s funeral.

Temptation withers, as does the pool of realistic candidates. You can’t date people your own age because there aren’t any. There’s less opportunity to meet “Mr. Right,” so you make do with an adequate alternative.

Eventually, time shrinks life to the point where you won’t even live long enough to hear all the nice things people say about you at your funeral. And the longer you live, the smaller the crowd will be at your memorial. Your lifetime list of good deeds will fade with time and memory.

Even when you are dead, you are not done shrinking – natural decay and estate taxes will take care of what’s left.

Readers with questions or comments for Lee Pitts may write to him in care of this publication.

4/30/2008