90 Is Way Older Than 89
“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” - Chili Davis
When my friend Louie was 88, he started telling women he was 90. “The chicks like it,” he said.
The “90” has gravitas. It’s the 10th decade of life, and sounds ancient. (80-year-olds are octogenarians; 90-year-olds are nonagenarians; 100-year-olds are centenarians.)
When someone asks how old I am these days and I say “90,” they do a double take. OK, I look younger, but still…
I feel 90. Looking in the mirror in the morning. Getting out of a car. Slowly losing strength, flexibility, various abilities. Forgetting names, places, events.
I think about my age every day. As I’ve written previously, it’s new territory. I’ve never been this old before, so all these daily experiences are new. How do I cope? What can I do? What makes sense as nature figures out how to take me down?
I think I can pass along some useful info here, especially to the baby boomers, who are about 10 years younger and approaching the big nine-oh. Kind of like I did with fitness books in the ‘80s and ‘90s — older guy passing along hopefully useful tips on aging to this large population group.
Maxed Out on the Fun Stuff
Alcohol, cannabis, coffee — to name a few. I’ve concluded that your (my) body has lifetime limitations. You can consume only so much of these feel-good drugs during the span of life until the body signals “Enough.”
This may only apply to me; I don’t know if it has relevance for others. Matter of fact, though, a long-time friend, my age, still smokes weed every day. Come to think of it, my friend Louie had shots of tequila well into his ‘90s.
Weed: reached my max years ago. Can’t smoke or even vape without my lungs sending out alarm signals. I now use gummies, home-made tinctures to get onto the right side of my brain.
Booze: 10 years ago, when Lesley and I travelled in Scotland, I’d have a pint, often two, of Guinness with fish and chips; plus I had maybe 10 years of whiskey after discovering single malt Scotch. Wine or beer every night with dinner (sun over yard arm at 5:30 PM). Now, I just can’t drink much at all. I miss the warmth and relaxation of wine in the early evening, and the conviviality and on-the-same-pageness of drinking in a bar, but now limit the boozing to infrequently and small amounts (and lately, Athletic non-alcohoholic hazy IPA or hard kombucha).
There was a recent article in the New York Times about how “… our body struggles more with alcohol as we age.” Loss of muscle mass, reduced liver function, dehydration, declining sleep quality as we age. Sigh…
Coffee: Morning latte and pastry in coffee shops: one of my great pleasures in life, but now I’m reduced to asking for a single rather than the customary double shot, and only drink about half of that.
As Lee Marvin (playing Chino) said in The Wild One, “…the shame of it all.”
“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” - Satchel Paige
A Few Non-Drug Anti-depressants
Exercise / Friends / Food / Music / Immersion in cold water / Waterfalls / Hot springs / Feedback on books / Adventures / Roads previously not taken…
The Light (or Darkness) at the End of the Tunnel
About 25 years ago, I published a book titled Getting Your Affairs in Order, by Elmo Petterle. Elmo had been the personnel manager for the Marin County PG&E and when an employee (usually a man) would pass away, he would contact the widow with respect to the family stocks, bank accounts, retirement funds, real estate, etc. He found that there was invariably confusion and that records, if any, were incomplete.
So he wrote the book, in which each person filled out all relevant information that the surviving spouse was now responsible for. It also included charts of the things that must be done immediately after a death, within 5 days, within 30 days, etc.
In editing the book, I acquired a bunch of books on dying, including some on assisted dying, such as Final Exit and the Peaceful Pill Handbook. I also concluded that when I get to the stage where the end is nigh, I’m not gonna get tortured to death by nature or medical intervention.
In the past few years, two people I was close to chose this solution. One ground up a lethal bunch of barbiturates in a coffee grinder, and put them in chocolate ice cream, which he then ate, and passed peacefully. The other told his doctor of his wishes; the doctor agreed, got approval from the hospice doctor, and, with close family members present, drank the cocktail administered by a hospice nurse, and passed serenely. Elegant.
If I had my druthers I would use sister morphine, but more realistically it might be helium. OK, enough on that subject.
Body Parts
Shoulders, knees, hips: these are the main joints of concern for old people. Then heart, blood pressure, circulation, obesity, arthritis, cholesterol, diabetes, cancer, asthma, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, prostate problems. What’s it gonna be? (You don’t get to choose.)
ás (at right) and I have been running together for over 30 years.Forgetfulness
Memory gets progressively worse. For me, I think it’s partly the fact that there are so many people in my life right now, and I can’t remember the names of most folks that come up to me. I’m thinking of getting a card printed up saying “I’m 90 years old and forgive me if I don’t remember your name. Best is to identify yourself whenever we meet.”
More and more often, I can’t think of the appropriate word. Like the most recent was “…transparency.” I’ll know what the word conveys, but can’t recall the word itself. Bucky Fuller said that when this happens, go on to other thoughts and the word will pop into your consciousness unbidden. Usually works.
I also have a ton of people coming up to me these days and telling me how much the Shelter books have influenced their lives — for some reason a lot of people in the 30-40-year-old category. I seem to be making more and more friends as the days go by, and it’s wonderful, but I can’t keep up with names.
Recently I started making a list of people I wanted to contact and/or hang out with, and I got up to 25 or so names. It’s a good kind of problem.
Not Answering Emails Or Texts Or DM’s Promptly
I don’t have my phone with me at all times — hey, I’m 90. I may not check my email for a few days, I still haven’t figured out how DM’s work on Instagram, so you can’t depend on me to get right back to you.
“Yes, You Already Told Me That”
Stop me if I’ve told you this tale before. I basically have no recollection of who I’ve told what.
Running the Homestead
This doesn’t have so much to do with being old as it has to do with being off-the-scale busy. Lesley and I built this house and garden over a period of almost 50 years. She’s been gone for about 2 1/2 years now, and I’m still coping with running it solo.
In a way, this busyness is a good thing. There’s so much to do that the idleness and/or lack of purpose that a lot of older people feel isn’t at work here. I bounce around from one thing to another. I walk from the house out to the studio, or from the shop to the greenhouse, and spy things to do along the way. (Then I’ll jump to doing the new thing, and forget my original mission.)
It’s pretty hectic at times, but I think it’s a good thing to keep busy. I’m never bored.
What Did I Come Out Here For?
This happens to me a lot: I’m in the studio and need to get something from the house. By the time I get to the house, I forget what I came in for. So — invariably — I go back out to the studio to remember what it was I needed from the house. (This always works.)
I read recently that a 90-year-old’s brain weighs about 3 1/2 ounces less than a 40-year-old’s brain (total weight of which is about 45 ounces).
How Long Can I Keep on Driving?
My depth perception is not as good these days. There are little things about driving where I’m not as sharp as I used to be. I’m really nervous about backing up. My neighbor Carl gave up driving when he was 96. So there will inevitably be a time when I’ll have to do the same. which would really put a dent in my activities — living, as I do — an hour away from San Francisco, and having had a car since I was 17.
BUT — I believe I’ve discovered a solution:
I took a Tesla Uber a month or so ago in Marin County, and the driver had it on autopilot. He was watchful, but the car made all the decisions — changing lanes, accelerating, braking — flawlessly. The full self-driving option is between $50-100 per month.
It turns out that Waymo and other automatic pilot vehicles have a better safety record than human drivers. For one thing, robots don’t drink alcohol, nor are they in a hurry or get distracted.
So when the time comes, I’ll get an electric car. By then there ought to be a lot more choices than there are right now. There’s much I like about the Teslas (other than their owner): beautiful design (like the door handles), and if you take out the back seat you have a lot of storage space. — a six-footer can sleep in this car.
The driver told me you can buy used Tesla model 3s for around $20,000.
Balance
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” - George Bernard Shaw
Riding a skateboard (or a unicycle, for example) requires sheer balance. You’re rolling, and there’s nothing to hold on to. To practice balance, I have what’s called an Indo board in the house and I try to get on it every few days.
Each time I use it and let go of any support, I’m a little nervous. Same thing with skating. Each time I push off and get rolling, I’m a little worried: I’m on my own — nothing to hold onto, no brakes. But I push myself to do these things. Use it or lose it.
Once I’m up and balancing on the Indo board (or skateboard), I realize that there are motors and reflexes at work that I’m not conscious of. It’s kind of miraculous. I do this so that this remarkable combination of mind/body functions continues to operate. Here’s just a small part of a long explanation from AI as to what’s going on here:
“Balancing on a skateboard… is mostly handled by automatic sensorimotor loops that run below conscious awareness, with your conscious attention setting goals (“go forward,” “turn,” “don’t fall”) while fast reflexes and learned predictions do the moment‑to‑moment corrections. These loops rely on continuous sensory input (inner ear, vision, body senses) and rapid outputs to muscles via brainstem and spinal pathways.” - Perplexity AI
It’s almost an out-of-body experience, like I’m observing this balancing act, but not consciously in control. Go with the flow is the mantra here.
Never fails to amaze…
Where’s My Phone, My Keys, My Wallet?
This is kind of a major problem for me these days. It’s the combination of aging along with the complexity of the modern world. I misplace my phone maybe once a week, my keys the same, my wallet occasionally. I use the Apple Find My app (which gives me a map and a sound to locate the missing object). You can also use the Tile app for the same kind of electronic sleuthing. Even with these apps , I often need to get help from others (usually younger ) to find the object.
Greater Perspective
There are a few advantages to old age. One is the perspective of having been alive for so long — a faculty that only old people have. And this is doubly useful when I can reminisce with people my age. To remember when milk was delivered to the doorstep, gas was 33 cents a gallon, before TV, playing in the streets before Little League, when annual tuition at Stanford was $660, when politicians were halfway decent, driving across America in the dead of winter in a 1960 VW bus with a 40 HP motor, the “English Invasion” of the ‘60s (Beatles, Stones), the Haight Ashbury before the Diggers and the “Summer of Love” — in fact, the ‘60s in general, including the Monterey Pop Festival.
To compare these memories with what’s happening now — wow!
I figure I’ve got about 10 years left. My dad lived to be 92, my mom 103. (I chose my parents carefully.)
When you’re at a loss for a word, say “I forget the English word for it.” That way people will think you’re bilingual rather than failing mentally. 😉
Lloyd, paving the way for us understudies. I do have a recollection to share, of you, still a teenager, at the kitchen table.