Jim Klobuchar – About Getting Old, Read My Lips

The calendar doesn’t negotiate with us or offer rewards. One of its chores is to make silent announcements, like: “one more birthday , friend.”

Let’s say the day comes when you graduate from your jolly 70s. That simple fact may not be worth launching a drum and bugle parade downtown or taking a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times.

Consider the possibility that the celebration can be simpler and a lot less expensive.

A few days ago I finished one of my bouts with the treadmill in the fitness center nearby. It’s one of those modern and progressive sweat boxes that gives major discounts, in some cases a free ride, to aging card holders in one of the major insurance companies.

The idea behind the insurance company’s gift to sweating geezers is the essence of shrewd humanitarianism. What they’re saying is: Stay healthy folks, so we don’t have to pay the hospital bills (out of your premiums). Which in one swoop makes (a) the customer healthier and (b) the insurance company richer.

Sometimes the system does work.

When I finished a half hour on the treadmill, I took a pair of 10-pound weights, lifted them over my head, alternating arms, and put down the weights after 15 minutes. After watching CNN bringing us the latest calamities for a few minutes I headed into the hallway leading to the locker room and showers.

A fellow was sitting on a chair at the head of the hallway, towel around his neck, a pleasant guy I’d met before. We exchanged greetings. He was breathing harder than he probably should have. He looked around to see if there was anyone else in earshot and asked: “How old are you?

I said I was 84. He nodded and smiled in a way that was intended to convey some sort of confession. “I’m 61,” he said.

I offered congratulations. He seemed to want to continue the conversation. He may have been imagining himself at my age, but without a lot of joy because he wasn’t especially proud of where he was physically and perhaps psychologically.

I had the impression he had time on his hands. From earlier conversations I knew he was reasonably well off, may have lived alone, a man stumbling in search, getting older faster.

All of those years had taught me some minimal discretions about giving advice. My paths to fulfillment, if that’s the correct word, might be 180 degrees from another’s. Other folks aren’t necessarily bashful about lighting the way for us. In my book stacks at home is one written by a Dr. Walter M. Bortz published by Simon and Shuster. In it Dr. Bortz challenges the men of the world: “Dare to be 100.”

I’ll admit that’s a reasonable goal. The doctor offers the challenge with energy and hustle, sprigs of humor and some genuinely sound medical advise based heavily on the idea of involvement with the world around us. He offers 100 suggestions ranging from keeping order in your life to being a good loser to convincing yourself that it’s never too late to be totally delighted with life heading into your 80s and beyond.

I would be the last to argue.

I couldn’t possibly have been there to talk about life with my friend in the fitness center if I hadn’t brought an end to my drinking 20 years ago with the help of friends, colleagues and my family and a burst of common sense.

I couldn’t possibly have been there if I didn’t have the brains to walk into a hospital three years before that and discovered that I had heart blockage of 90, 95,90 and 100 per cent, and needed surgery almost that very day.

Nor could I have been there unless I addressed the enticements that pulled me into a life of self-gratification. My time, my agendas.

I don’t know if the fellow in the chair outside the workout room knew all of that or would be interested if he did. I turned to leave, but I stopped and shook his hand, and he seemed about to ask a question.

“Work on your friendships,” I said. “rekindle some of the old ones. When it’s all said and done it’s the relationships that matter most. Travel when you can. Embrace the world, if it’s no further than the North Shore of Lake Superior. Think about somebody who needs your help and pick up the phone. And come here and take care of your body. Think about somebody who needs your help.”

So I went back to the treadmill and did ten minutes more.