Guilt, Fear and Getting Old
It’s my birthday tomorrow. I will be 52 and things just don’t work as well as they used to these days. The connections between mind and body seem to have weakened which can be quite alarming.
I gave a masterful performance as an idiot recently for example.
I’m supposed to be on a diet so, when I eat junk food, there is a lot of guilt associated with it. The other day I was home alone and I indulged in half a box of chocolate cookies and half a bag of cheese and onion crisps.
I was on my way out of my room after hiding the other half of the crisps when my daughter appeared at the top of the stairs and gave me a fright.
I jumped up in fear and stepped backwards as guilt kicked in and my mouth began moving with no instructions from my brain.
“ooh” I said in fright followed immediately by an “ahhh” of guilt and my mouth started framing excuses while my brain was still in fright mode and not in any state to help out.
The disconnection resulted in something like “uber uber ber ber” coming out of my mouth.
My brain registered this gibberish and began hollering at me to shut up before I dobbed myself in but shut up, shut up, shut up came out of my mouth as “p, p, p”.
What my daughter saw was me jump, step backwards then say “oooh ahhhh uber uber ber ber p p p.”
She stood looking at me as if I had lost my mind which I quite clearly had but the look on her face made the noises stop.
“Ohh kaaaay,” she said “what was that all about?”
“I have no idea,” I replied, “I think it’s what happens when fright mixes with guilt in old people.”
Naturally she was onto the whole guilt thing like a shot and I was too shaken by the bizarre noises I’d made to resist so I confessed all and we both fell apart at the seams laughing.
I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that this happened and wondering what else is in store for me.
Come to think of it, oooh ahhh uber uber ber ber p p p does sort of express how I sometimes feel these days hehehe.
