On Turning Sixty
by Robert Levin
Although it’s 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 that 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 it
can afford me that a movie I’m going to 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.
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