Turning on a dime takes time

One sure sign you’re getting older: You have to plan to drink.

— An observation made by a former co-worker

My ex-co-worker’s words, made some years ago, come back to mind now as I ponder a closely related sign of aging: Getting grouchy and bellyache-y when people expect you to turn on a dime.

What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Talkmistress?

“Something that turns on a dime changes direction very quickly; more or less instantaneously,” according to the American Culture Explained website, America explained.wordpress.com. “The origin of the expression goes back to high-performance cars, airplanes, boats. The ability to turn around on the smallest of coins implies that you can turn very quickly in a very small space.”

When I refer to a person turning on a dime, the meaning is similar. A person who can “turn on a dime” has the ability to drop everything that previously occupied her time and attention, change directions, and pick up some new obligation or task … on short notice.

Spontaneity is a big, fun part of youth. When you’re young, you can be sitting around with your friends and on the spur of the moment decide to have a pizza party or kegger. Or head to your town’s hottest night joint. Or backpack across Europe, which you somehow manage to do even though you’re too broke to pay attention.

When you get older, you find yourself less willing to even bend down and pick a dang dime up off the ground — much less turn on a dime, acting on anything of which you’ve received short notice.

Unfortunately, in my case, folks don’t realize this. It seems the older and busier I get, the more I find myself invited, or requested, to lend my attention to events that are happening, well, tomorrow. Well, maybe it’s not that I’m getting more littleto-no-notice invitations. Maybe it’s just that my tolerance for them has dipped lower than, well, the price of talk. And the more this happens, the more I’ve found myself grumbling.

I’m sorry, folks. The Old Gray Mare — well, the older, graying mare — she ain’t the spontaneous, dime-turning flower she used to be. If she ever was.

At the newspaper, features content, which I help generate, must be planned in advance. Nonetheless, we Features folk receive many last-minute requests. Because of the nature of the beast, a bit of that is expected.

But some last-minute invitations and requests are enough to make

the eyes cross. I recently received a worst-case-scenario invitation: an evening-time plea to participate in a program that was scheduled for the next morning. The person

making the request had been a victim of “last-minute-itis” herself, having been tasked with putting the program together just that day, she said. I not only turned her down, I shook my head and vented to hubby not only about the last-minute request made of me, but the last-minute demand made of her.

Yes, I know all those New Testament accounts of last-minute requests that were so divinely dealt with. So I remind myself — I should respond with grace, whether my answer is yes or no. Especially considering the probability that some people deliberately give short notice of an event because they’re afraid

the invitees will simply forget about the invitation. After all, forgetfulness is another thing that tends to want to bite even the healthiest of us in the behind as the birthdays pile up. I also remind myself of the one big advantage of these last-minute invitations. If it’s one we don’t want to accept in the first place, and we already

have plans, even the biggest people-pleasers and can’t-sayno-ers among us can decline with no knock on the ol’ conscience.

I daresay that if any one of us were awakened at 3 in the morning by a reliable someone who had a goodly amount of money to give us but we had to get up and go meet them in, say, 45 minutes to an hour, we’d turn on a dime in order to get those dollars.

And getting back to what my co-worker said, I also daresay that some advancing agers still engage in short-notice Happy Hours.