Ted Wilson Reviews the World: Aging

★★★★★ (5 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing aging.

As you move through life, you’ll find that you are always older than before. You’ll never be who you were, and you’ll never be who you are. But you will always be who you will be.

My favorite thing about aging is that whereas in my youth I was only mediocre looking, I am now just as wrinkly and foreign looking as my previously handsome contemporaries. Less attractive people, you can breathe a sigh of relief! We all age into the same, equal level of unattractiveness!

There’s no cure for this. Being mummified can make you look hundreds of years younger, but leaves your skin waxy. Plastic surgery definitely tricks everyone, but is prohibitively expensive. The only real way to stop aging is to move at the speed of light.

Once you embrace the futility of fighting aging, it becomes much more manageable. I leverage my old age as much as possible. It’s amazing how many people will pick things up for you if you wince and say “Ohhhh, my back.” My back is fine, but I like letting people help me. It makes them feel good and I drop stuff a lot.

What I’m saying is, aging doesn’t have to be so negative. One fun aspect is all the new and surprising things your body will decide to do. Mine decided to start growing hair out of my ears. Why? To make hearing even harder? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I’m happy to have built-in earmuffs. It saved me a few dollars and I never lose them.

A lot of people who aren’t old think of older people as a vast well of knowledge, as if we’re wiser or something. This isn’t really the case. It’s like having 200 channels on your TV — more options, but more uselessness. I can tell you what the price of a toothbrush was in 1953, but so what?

The only real downside to aging is that there are fewer people to talk to, either because your friends have begun dying off, or because in general people don’t care to talk to older people. It means I have to make more of an effort and that can sometimes come across as desperate. Like when I start dialing random phone numbers to see if anyone wants to talk. Usually the people who do want to talk to a stranger on the phone, I quickly discover are not people I want to talk to.

Fortunately I’ve recorded most of my phone calls over the past 20 years and I’ve memorized all my lines from my favorite conversations. When I play them back and recite my lines aloud it’s like I’m having the conversation all over again, even if the other person is dead. It’s like watching a rerun .

BEST FEATURE: I no longer need to brush my teeth because they’re all fake.
WORST FEATURE: I don’t know what EDM is and when I ask people they laugh and tell me I’m cute but no one will answer me.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing ants.