Now this might come as a shock to some of you, but I'm not particularly well known for my planning skills. Planning for anything further away than dinner today, and even deciding what is going to get me drunk best at the lowest cost (although it always is that Aged Priest) gets my head spinning. Leaves me bewildered, be-fuddled, confused - much like a baby at a huge lesbian orgy would be. Although that's the nice sort of confused; mine isn't so very nice.
Recent encounters I've had with (for lack of a better, more politically correct way of saying this) an old fart, have changed things a bit though. Senile, moody and easy to anger, this old bugger put the fear of God back into me. Well, not God; but that did seem like a nice thing to say. Fear of growing old and turning into a cranky fart with mood swings so wild that would make a pregnant Mamata Banerjee seem docile is what I actually wanted to say. Turning a year older didn't help either.
I've sat and wondered what life would be like when I'm older. No, not older, old. Being in the final year of college gets you some benefits, and having people around me who've aged more in the span of four years than my granny has all her life has left me with little work, as far as wondering is concerned. If there ever was a sports meet for people aged over 70, my friends and I could probably get a few bronze medals, we really are that old. Baldness, arthritis, back aches, permanently-half-dislocated joints, haemorrhoids, you name it, we've got it.
Jokes aside, I've thought about how old-life's going to be. This is what i came up with - Pissing in your pants, smelling of it all the time, dentures, a few stents to keep them blood vessels from choking the life out of your poor heart, a walker perhaps, glasses that can stop bullets, beige trousers; you get the idea. I hope I'm rich by then. I'll be paying off people around me to tell me the second my trousers turn darker around my Gentleman's area; let me know when my mumbling and talking to myself gives the neighbours' kids nightmares and stop me when I yell at kids playing in the yard.
There are some old-things I can't wait for though. I'm really looking forward to the day I get my Fart-when-you-bloody-well-feel-like-it card. I'm paying a little extra to get the Burp-when-you-bloody-well-feel-like-it add-on though, and I recommend you do the same as well.
But God help you if you're in India, because when you're 90 and waiting in a queue to renew the bloody thing, there probably will be some blithering rascal who'll ask you for your 10th std. certificate, your Mum's left thumb print and your father to be present in person.
