I’m not getting better with age. I’m just older, and I’m
tired. I’m tired of not being able to find the toilet bowl plunger.
The plunger is supposed to be under the sink, tucked in the
back of the cabinet where the grandbabies can’t “discover” it, drag it out, and
suck on it. That’s where it’s supposed to be. I’m fifty plus years old, and
I’ve had a few years to work out a system so that I know where that grubby
plunger is supposed to be.
I KNOW WHERE THE PLUNGER IS SUPPOSED TO BE . . .
So that when the plunger is not where it is supposed to be
and I’m left standing, starring into the rising tide of toilet bowl heartbreak
I have nothing left to give in the way of patience and tolerance and . . . did
I mention patience? Nothing. Left. To. Give.
All I can hear is fifty plus years of my own voice, echoing
down the corridors of time, saying, “Hey who took the plunger? I need it now.
Hurry! I mean it. Dark water rising! Arrrrgh!”
And I’m sick of it. And I’m old. And I’m not more patient. And I’m over it. I’m over the thoughtlessness of people who take other people’s
stuff and don’t put it back where they found it: scissors, plungers, hammers, remotes, the twenty bucks in my
wallet, car keys, cars, etc.
I’m so over it that I actually heard myself screaming at the
top of my lungs today, “Whoever took the toilet bowl plunger had better bring
it back or I’ll cut ‘em. I’ll cut ‘em with a knife. I swear it.”
This is not me getting better with age. This is me acting
like a candidate for early retirement.
There’s a lot about getting older that is butterfly
beautiful and lovely and of good report, and there’s a lot about getting older
that looks and smells like a clogged toilet when some dumb bunny has run off
with your plunger. The trick is to try not to let stuff pile up so that you
need a plunger in the first place or you may find yourself saying stuff like,
“The next person who wears my garden boots and leaves them half full of sand
isn’t going to need his or her feet—ever again.”
Can you imagine being as old as that old guy in the Bible?
Methuseleh was supposed to be 969 years old. Nine hundred and sixty nine years
of trying to get people to put the goats back where they found them. Yuck.
Linda (Live Long and Suffer) Zern
