Southern Indiana Living - Sept / Oct 2022

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A Note to Baby Boomers
One way to feel younger is to
hang out with people older.
Hey, I’ll take it.
Older people need
someone who will listen about their
sore knees, their cable bills, their hearing
aid batteries, grandkids who text
instead of call and lifelong friends
whose funerals were last week.
I listened for a living. I can listen
with the best of them. If only I was as
good at stopping the toilet from running.
I settle into a stage in which
young feels a fading memory but old
still seems more foe than friend. So
when not fighting, I nod. I sympathize.
My day comes, I realize, when
still more of me wears out. Already I
polish my own collection of stop-thepresses
grievances should some sap a
generation behind me be up, yes, to
hearing about it.
Not only is the future a four-letter
word. Today can boggle, as well.
I will plug in my next car alongside
the toaster? Do I get that channel? Do
I want to?
Did I really pay $80 for a steak?
Is peeing every other hour normal?
Listening?
Grab hold of aging, we hear.
Stare it down. Stay active, keep moving.
Remain informed, be useful.
Don’t act our ages. Don’t die before
death. All fair and all easier said than
done.
Every week or two this past
spring, the wind blew like Southern
Indiana is a barrier island. Biggerthan-big
limbs fell at our place. My
house is among this area’s oldest.
No surprise, then, so are too
many of the trees. Like writers and
the elderly company they keep, trees
do not live forever, storms or no
storms. I cannot expect otherwise.
Like there is no point in wishing
my father, or his father, or someone
else near and dear had taught me
how to cope with trees that, with a
whoosh, go horizontal. Handiness
swims nowhere near the Moss gene
pool.
In other words, I could today
buy a chainsaw. Then tomorrow I
could buy a prosthetic hand.
Instead, a friend heeded my plea
and, without so much as a sweat,
sawed big pieces into ones little
enough for the street department to
haul away. Such is heroism as I define
it these days.
No action in Washington, or Indianapolis,
matters more than common
courtesies we can give and receive
and occasionally actually do. So
if listening to whines and whims of
people a decade or two my senior is
all it takes, I’m game.
Just keep your politics to yourself.
Our local public library needs
board-of-directors members, like do a
nearby cemetery and a park. I can do
stuff like that – more than decently –
so I do stuff like that.
Requiring only one bottle of
shampoo per year is not my only
strength.
A neighbor shares his vegetable
garden with us. That, too, is good, in
more ways than one. A childhood pal
occasionally has the old gang over
for grilled goodies and strolls down
memory lane. I enjoy not only every
bite but every story.
It’s funny, though, those gettogethers.
We end up talking about
what’s ahead. We prove that fun is
not finite; more is there for the taking.
One guy, whom I never would have
guessed would leave our hometown,
just returned from Portugal.
Tell me more about these group
tours you take, my host asked me.
Time’s a wasting.
Before we know it, I reply, we
will be old as in too old. So go. Do. I
know some terrific dog watchers. You
don’t even need to bring me back a
T-shirt.
Actually, I’m more into coffee
mugs.
Food sticks between my teeth.
Why? Teeth spread out over time.
Losing weight is more difficult, staying
awake is more difficult, seeing
and hearing and digesting and remembering
all ran out of warranty.
No action in Washington, or Indianapolis,
matters more than common courtesies we can
give and receive and occasionally actually do.
So if listening to whines and whims of people a
decade or two my senior is all it takes, I’m game.
Will my toenails stop growing
when I no longer can reach them?
Don’t answer that.
That inevitable litany aside,
though, I increasingly convince myself
to appreciate what remains to
appreciate. I finally get the hang of
retirement. I do not necessarily need
to know what day of the week it is. I
can run errands on my schedule, not
on my employer’s.
I can count on one finger the
number of times I have worn a necktie
this year.
Plus, health-care costs are, well,
less unaffordable. Whoever came up
with Medicare is right up there with
Willie Mays.
I improve at facing facts, easier
to see with the reading glasses scattered
at my place. My Giants are winning
without me on the mound. A
not-all-that-young woman at the gym
calls me “sir.” My local high school
supposedly came up all-but-empty in
its search for a new basketball coach.
Yet I was not asked to come to
the sidelines rescue. And to think
I know a couple of dandy out-ofbounds
plays.
I feel more good than bad. I can
climb stairs and distinguish a noun
from a verb. I haven’t vomited in like
20 years and that’s got to count for
something, right?
If listening to older people hate
on getting older is my lot in life, I
welcome the opportunity. Maybe I
will learn something or teach something.•
After 25 years, Dale Moss
retired as Indiana columnist for
The Courier-Journal. He now
writes weekly for the News and
Tribune. Dale and his wife Jean
live in Jeffersonville in a house
that has been in his family
since the Civil War. Dale’s e-
mail is dale.moss@twc.com
Southern Indiana Living • Sept/Oct 2022 • 11