Why some things are no longer funny when you get older
THERE are many things they don’t tell you about getting old. It’s just as well, or you’d spend your early years in hedonistic pursuit of a burn-out in middle age rather than face the slide towards the Four Ds – decay, decrepitude, dementia and death.
It’s not THAT bad, you might say. If you’ve not been there.
Some of it you can imagine when you’re young – less energy, more aches and pains, sagging skin, toilet troubles. They’re the good bits.
But no-one warns you that there will come a day when you’ll feel less comfortable about laughing at other people making a fool of themselves.
This knowledge came as a shock to me and the Patron Saint of Patience, aka my wife.
We’d always shared the ability to laugh at others’ mishaps, as long as there was no lasting damage done. A missed step here; a burst shopping bag there; a spilt glass of wine in a hushed restaurant… that sort of thing.
The way we see it there are two possible outcomes: either the victim suffers and onlookers get upset as well; or the victim suffers and others have a laugh. Two-nil to misery or a 1-1 draw? It’s a no-brainer, rather like me.
One day, I was returning from the bar in our local with several drinks when I tripped, fell almost flat on my face and sent beer everywhere. My male friends showed nothing but concern. My wife had hysterics.
We realised this week that our little source of amusement had slipped away when one of our friends almost did – for real.
Our dawdle of OAPs (how’s that for a collective noun?) was walking in the countryside when the 70-something pal missed his footing and fell. As he thrust out a hand to stop himself tumbling into a field several feet below, my wife rushed to his aid – and neither of us laughed.
Our guffaw button, which once needed the lightest of touches, was stuck fast.
It’s because we know that falls like that, so easily brushed off in earlier years, can now lead to sprains or breaks, which can hamper mobility, which can lead to weight gain, which can make getting about harder still. A wound might become infected, so you’ll need dressings and a nurse coming in and meals-on-wheels and growing isolation and before you know it, you’re dribbling into your soup at a nursing home and looking forward to a sing-song around the piano – but don’t worry, it’s only temporary, they say, until you get on your feet again, though by then you’ve lost half your marbles and your kids are wondering if there’ll be anything left once they’ve sold your house and paid off the care bills.
They don’t tell you about that!
Don’t worry, it’s only temporary, they say, until you get on your feet again, though by then you’ve lost half your marbles.