Although it has brought me that much closer to transforming into worm food, I`ve found that turning sixty is not without its compensations.
While it`s true, for example, that my member isn`t getting a proper supply of blood anymore and that I can no longer write my name in the sand and must settle for my initials, I can still have lots of fun with it. Thanks to an ever-enlarging prostate gland that`s threatening to devour my bladder, my urine stream now bifurcates at the exit point. This means that I can whiz into the toilet and the adjacent bathtub at the same time which is a kick. My urologist says that while he can make no promises. There`s a good chance that in the not too distant future I`ll be capable of TRIfurcating. This will enable me to whiz into the toilet, the bathtub AND the laundry basket simultaneously.
I can`t wait.
And by making it possible to legitimately deflect questions that have always rankled the hell out of me ("Isn`t it time you threw out those Smurf jars with the petrified flecks of premixed peanut butter `n` jelly down toward the bottom?" is a persistent one that never fails to put me in a homicidal rage), my newly developed hearing loss has a terrific upside as well. Not, to be sure, that its downside isn`t just as major. I mean, how many invitations to lunch have I blown? How many people have said, "Let me buy you lunch." and I`ve said in reply, "Yes it is great that we got Bin Laden." (As thorny as this problem is, I`ve managed to ease it somewhat by saying, maybe a dozen times a morning to people who appear to be talking to me, "Thanks, I`d love to." Though probably several hundred of them have walked away from me very quickly and two, I guess they had their reasons, punched me in the stomach. I`ve gotten six lunches doing this and I would otherwise have missed out on. Not to mention a free ticket to a WAYNE NEWTON concert!)
But if the benefits and drawbacks of my hearing impairment more or less cancel out each other, the short-term memory loss that`s accompanied my sexagenarianism has a plus side that actually outweighs its minus side. I`m speaking, of course, of the guarantee that it can afford me a movie I`m going to and that will be a good one. I`ll notice, for instance, an ad for a movie and tell a friend about it. The friend will advise me that I saw the movie just a week ago. I`ll ask him if I liked it and if he says, "Yeah, you couldn`t stop talking about it." I`ll think, hey, how often does a movie come with THAT kind of recommendation and I`ll go immediately to see it. I`m told that I`ve seen "Pearl Harbor" eight times now.
(I might add here that being strictly of the short-term variety, my memory loss in no way affects my ability to remember the last time I had sex.)
But of the many compensatory rewards that turning sixty provides (and you`ll agree they are not inconsiderable) there`s one that I value above all others. Although I can still croak at a relatively early age I`ve been spared the embarrassment of a TRAGICALLY early demise.