"Getting On"

By Jim Myers April 13, 1994

“And tell Grandpa I said hello.”

I’m a recently divorced middle-aged man. I have a lady friend that I date from time to time who is thirteen years younger than myself. She in turn has a brother three years her junior. When he found out I was forty-six he deemed it his privilege to say obnoxious things at the end of his phone calls. Things like “And tell Grandpa I said hello.” Some people find that funny. I find it mildly amusing. I believe if he slipped on a recently mopped floor, hit his head and ripped his pants, that would be funny.

I should have a fairly healthy grip on what is or is not funny. I’m a professional comedian who has been paying his rent playing the circuits of comedy clubs for the past fifteen years. I love my work, despite the traveling, loathe hotel rooms (even the really nice ones), and I’ve come to a certain conclusion about the passing years. I’m not getting better, I’m getting older.

Two years ago I came to believe that if I did not quit cigarettes they were going to kill me. My doctor prescribed the patch and much to my surprise I never smoked another cigarette. Most smokers suffer certain side effects when they quit smoking and I was no exception. My pants got smaller, my shirts got tighter, and my undies began to bind. For those smokers out there who might be reading this, never fear, your socks will still fit like gloves (so will your gloves).

I gained thirty-three pounds in less than a year. A man who was formerly five foot, eleven inches tall and one hundred and sixty-five became five foot ten inches tall and one-hundred and ninety-eight pounds.

“That’s got to be a mistake”, I told my doctor, and “I’m five foot, eleven inches tall.”

“You’re shrinking.” My doctor told me I was shrinking. I started to ask him if he was kidding. Then I realized he might say no. Now, I can honestly say that he might have been kidding. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure he was kidding. He’s a very funny guy, my doctor.

“You need to exercise more and get off the sweets.”, said my doctor.

Sometimes he’s not so funny.

Exercise. The very word has a certain ugly sound to it. According to my copy of Webster’s the word exercise is followed by words like exert and exhaust. Who of you out there feels like exerting and exhausting? Just before the word exercise in my Webster’s, I find the word exempt. Exempt? That must be me! After all, I’m the guy who took the trouble to look it up.

I join a gym, I buy a juicer, I drink water, I go for long walks. I hate my life.

At the gym I am lined up with a bunch of my fellow inductees. You can spot us a mile away. We’re that group of pudge in the corner. We’re wearing brand new exercise clothes that have yet to see a drop of perspiration. If we look nervous it’s because we are looking at all the healthy people exercising their firm little buttocks, sweating, puffing, heaving, and looking attractive. We hate them and would conspire to kill them but who among us has that kind of energy? I decide to leave. I’m not going to suffer this indignity. I head for the stairs and start climbing toward the first floor exit. In a dozen steps I am out of breath, and I can’t help but notice that with every step my buttocks high-five the tops of my thighs. I head back down the stairs to my fate.

I do my half hour workout and then I read a table that tells me what I’ve shed in calories. In one half hour I lost the equivalent of a pecan Sandie. That in itself would be bad enough, but I realize I want a cookie.

“She’s young enough to be your daughter.”

I suspect that this particular phrase is centuries old. God alone may know who coined it. Still, I would be willing to wager my every worldly possession that it was a female. I asked a woman once if there was anything crueler you could say to a middle-aged man. She responded, “You’re old enough to be her father.”

A psychologist friend of mine who just happens to be a woman once told me that the middle-aged man who pursues younger women is chasing his youth. I told her that I enjoy dating younger women, and I agreed that I was chasing. I also told her that my youth and what I was chasing were two entirely different things.

Every day I choose not to smoke cigarettes, but rather take a walk. I’ve chosen a middle ground to the fanatic on the exercise bike and the chain smoker at the computer console. I’ve shed eight of the thirty-three pounds I gained and with a little patience and a lot of walking I will shed another twelve. I will never again be the hard-bodied one hundred and sixty-five pound male that I used to see in the mirror. I will however buy new clothes because the ones I now own are too large. I find that by avoiding radical changes in my life I avoid radical rebounds. By accomplishing in increments, things tend to have a more lasting effect.

A month or so ago my youngest daughter informed me that in November of this year I will become a grandfather. Tears came to my eyes and I told her I was very happy for her and my son-in-law. A day later I was talking to my lady friend, the one whose brother has such a smart mouth.

“I forgot to tell you”, I stumbled, “Lisa is going to have a baby in November.”

She looked at me smiling and congratulated me. Then, all at once I could see the reality of what I was saying dawn on her face. She smiled at me.

“Gee, I never slept with anyone’s grandfather before.”