Breakdown… Go Ahead and Give it To Me.

As I stare out my office window and watch the sleet and snow slowly envelope my car in a cocoon of yuck, I feel it coming.  My mood’s changing.  It’s not so much because I have an afternoon of spreading salt, shoveling driveways, and “trying not to die on the way home” ahead of me.  It’s the cold, hard realization that I’m not as young as I used to be.  I’ve entered a bold, new era.  Technically, I’m middle aged and there’s nothing I can do about it.  

I didn’t like him the first time around.

But instead of focusing on the manual labor awaiting me or how I’m too old for this nonsense, I’ve decided to dedicate this entry to some other, lessor advertised, realities of “maturing”.  So here are two “getting older” concerns (some might say grievances) that I’d like to spread out on the table of truth.   If you’ve got any you’d like to share, feel free to add them to the comments section below.  I could use a good laugh at your expense.

Body Hair.  This topic can be broken down into many, unhappy subcategories.  But for now, I’ll spare you most of the ugliness and concentrate on my biggest concern… the rogue hair.  Now when I say “hair” I’m not referring to the plural form of the word (although there are several odd developments on that front as well).  I’m angry about single hairs that show up out of the blue… in places where hairs should never be.  For instance… over the past five years, I’m noticed a long white hair that appears in my right ear.  It’s not sprouting from the ear canal or the lobe where you’d expect, but from the upper-middle, cartilage-y part of the ear.  A strictly non-hair-growing part of my body.  Now here’s the unsettling part.  The hair just magically appears from time to time… out of nowhere.  And when it does, it’s already over an inch long!  After plucking it out, my reaction is always the same… “where the heck did that come from?” and more importantly… “how did I miss that for the past six weeks?”.  It’s like waking up one day to find you had a fully formed third arm growing out of your kneecap.  It’s just weird.  Stuff like this didn’t happen when I was 15.

Oops… There’s More Pee.  Again, there are many ugly iterations of this issue.  I’d like to focus on what I call the post bathroom squirt.  Now you ladies out there probably haven’t experienced this exact phenomenon I’m about to describe, but I’ve seen enough “I pee a little when I sneeze” commercials to realize we’re all kind of messed up down there.  Here’s how it goes down… there’s nothing unusual about the evacuation of the bladder.  However, after the deed is complete (the pants are zipped, the hands are washed, you’re heading for the door)… more comes out.  Depending on where you are at the moment determines your next move.  If it’s 3am and you’re home, you probably just laugh a little, wring out your underwear and climb back into bed.  If you’re about to go into a board meeting regarding your recent job performance, things get a little more serious.  Now here’s the weird part… it keeps happening.  And no matter how long you stand over the toilet and wait, or shake the crap about of little Petey, or wish this problem away… you’re hosed (see what I did there?). 

Well, the snow and ice only seem to be getting worse, so I guess it’s time to go home now.  Thanks for reading. 

Now get off my lawn.