One of the visitors to my office calls me Grandpa Smurf. One of my kids told me -- or maybe it was M -- that the Old Guy on the Smurfs was Papa and not Grandpa Smurf ... unless Smurfette had a teenage baby or something, there is no Grandpa there among the Blue-faced Leprichauns of TV-dom ... that is, Grandpa Smurf already "passed," as we're prone to say.
Now, this is just a hair (don't say a word about my disappearing hairs) difficult. The Last Quarter doesn't align with other measures of age, as it includes years from Late Middle that morph into Old Age, Dotage and, betimes, Dementia. (Dotage, by the way, is the Age of Dotterers who walk hither and yon without knowing exactly why and -- and this is important -- who've forgotten that Dottering might be spelled with two-T's). All this is to say that between the Addled state that many Fourth Quarterers find themself in and questions of General Semantics, it is no small feat to decide when to don the title: Old Man. And it doesn't make it any easier to know that all the Rockers of our youthful years 50 years ago have either, as the Capitol Steps averred, "traded their Weed in for Weed-whackers" or have applied to sit in Rockers for repaints of Grandma Moses ... ... or that when Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were singing "Old Man," the person they were referring to was roughly the age of our kids.
This is serious, now. No funning. "What am I?"
What am I when the tonicity in my lip muscles decreases sufficiently to produce drool stains on my tie?
What am I when younger people look at me with a degree of pathos as they hold the door open?
What am I when kids walking on the street smirk or comment a bit when I drive by in a roadster?
What am I if I no longer care if I forgot what I was looking for when I walked into a room?
What am I, Heaven forfend, if I don't remember the different usages of Lunesta and Levitra?
Now, please don't tell me; Grandpa Smurf gotta figure this one out by himself.To be continued (with any luck)
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