Getting Older

Some of you have already read the title and gone, 'What the hell is she talking about? Getting older, the girl's only just shy of thirty!'. Well, I'm not complaining about me getting older, though I am noticing my knees don't like me so much in the morning anymore, I'm talking about some of the weird idiosyncrasies that seem to be paired with the age slide.
I've noticed a few of these things over the last few years at my job as a receptionist, and it scares the crap out of me that I may provoke eye rolling from the up and coming youth. Or worse still, reserve a bed in the sanitarium for recounting my crazed tendencies as a youth and forgetting the punchline 'But I didn't really kill that guy that ran up the back of my ankles with a shopping cart'.
It's all about the details.
Anyway, besides the obvious ailments, it's the weird backwards slide of common sense that has me wondering about the grand master plan of aging. Yes, it's a necessity, and yes it's completely inevitable, but at which point do you become that person you duck around a corner and hide from when you see them coming?
Here's what bothers me at present;
Number one - Hearing issues. This is an understandable drawback of the aging process, and I sympathise, but why on earth does that mean you have to yell at me? I can hear you just fine (for now). Unless of course this is where it all stems from? Were they once yelled at across the counter of their workplace, irritated that they heard a muttering of 'grumpy old bastard' just fine, but didn't hear a word about the bill? Is it possible this selective hearing is a vicious circle of the elderly yelling at the young and inadvertently damaging generation after generation of eardrums?
Food for thought.
Number two - Crazy Stories. I am positive that I am a magnet for these. I have heard about Aunt Rhona's bum rash, cousin Mary's long lost dog and even the 'pink eye' Uncle Walter got from his cat consistently farting on his pillow. I even had a guy smile at me the other day, shake a brown paper bag in front of my face and tell me he needed to pee in a cup. I was happy for him, but at a loss as to how I was supposed to roll with that conversation. Needless to say, I do not want to scare people with my obscure stories of the past or toilet habits of the present!
Number three - Driving! Just because things are slowing down, doesn't mean your car has to. The accelerator still likes to do sixty in a sixty zone, and it really enjoys keeping up with the traffic. And to those of you in three wheeler's, don't be afraid to execute something less than a twenty point turn. Reverse beeping is annoying after twenty minutes of listening to it.
Right. Well, there are more, but I'm starting to think I might be getting a little too excited about this subject and I don't want to offend. I have a great deal of respect for the elderly and their contribution to society, I guess I just keep meeting the petrol sniffers of the twenties and thirties. Perhaps I need to get out more.
More food for thought.

Kristy :)