Episode 84: On Getting On

* At the farmers' market last summer, people were snapping photos of my T-shirt. Written on it were the words, "Half the men my age are dead." People of my generation found it funny. My daughter didn't like it at all. I am 75. That's the average life expectancy of the American male.

There's this, though: If you manage to reach 75, your life expectancy jumps to 86.3. That's good.

I guess.

* A current Humana TV commercial pushes its Medicare supplement plan. It was written by someone who thinks people over 60 suffer universal physical and intellectual enfeeblement. It is delivered by an announcer speaks VERY CLEARLY and A LITTLE TOO LOUDLY. He underlines one word for emphasis on a whiteboard that has only ten in total. The word is "and". He then makes a joke so lame it wouldn't cause a titter from a toddler. And he makes a very, very big deal out of the fact that the sales brochure he wants you to call for is FREE! Madison Avenue really should seek out copywriters who have had their last growth spurts and whose complexions have cleared up.

* So far, I haven't felt the old-guy compulsion to find myself those armpit trousers with two-foot zippers. But retirement has propelled me toward the comforts of track suits, in my case a blue velour number that is bliss during the morning hours I devote to the newspapers. It makes me look like an over-the-hill Atlantic City lounge singer, so I promise not to wear it outside the house. On the other hand, the sweatshirt and pants I wear to the health club are rapidly becoming supermarket and rest-of-the-day wear.

* In the last decade I had a quintuple bypass and left carotid throat surgery. I've had a dental implant and gout (twice). My left knee and right hip periodically threaten to quit on me. I have arthritis everywhere but my hair, and my blood sugar skitters along the edge of diabetes. Like most people other than hedge fund managers I lost a ton of money in the recent economic unpleasantness.

So why am I so happy nearly all the time, often even downright giddy? Why do I all but skip to the mailbox to retrieve all those Christmas catalogs?

As a freelance writer working at home with a wife who commuted to the city five days a week, it took a year or so after she retired to get used to her being around all the time. After necessary adjustments, including addressing changed expectations and new divisions of labor, we settled into this warm bath that is retirement.

We sleep until we wake up. We read the papers until we are finished. We nap when we feel like it. We get discounts at museums and movies and hotels. No homework. No bosses. No brain-dead editors. No spiteful colleagues. Our friends are mostly younger than we, because I'm no more enthusiastic about cranky old people than I am about other people's messy progeny (our grandchildren are, of course, golden exceptions.) At lunch, we discuss dinner. We plan our next trip to to Venice. To Paris.

What's not to like?

A happy new year for you, too.