Andy Rooney
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- ON Feb. 24, "Sunday Morning," the television program made famous by Charles Kuralt and now presided over by Charles Osgood, broadcast my essay on being old. CBS won't sue me if I repeat it here:
I write using almost everything I know anything about.
One of the things I know a lot about but do not mention in my writing, is being old. It's such an unpleasant subject that I avoid it and hope no one will notice.
I avoid talk about the good old days, too. It not only makes the person doing it sound old…but, as we all know, if we're realistic, the good old days were no better than today's days.
One of the worst things about being old is how condescending people are toward you. They offer to help you do things you're capable of doing without help. If I want help, I'll damn well ask for it.
People try to make you feel better about your age by lying. They tell you how good you look. I know how I look. I look old and old does not look good.
People trying to be nice say, "What's wrong with being old?"
It's a dumb question to which I have a ready answer: "I'm going to die before you do; that's what's wrong it."
When I was 10, I had already thought a lot about death. I was scared of it even then. "Nothing ever again" - that was the chilling thought that went through my mind. It still does.
For years I hoped I'd live to be 83. That was an arbitrary age I picked when it was so far off in my future that it didn't worry me.
Now, being 83, I am no longer anywhere near being ready to settle for dying in my 84th year. I am no more ready to die today than I was when I was 10.
It would be a comfort to me if I believed in a life hereafter but I don't. I notice that people who speak as though they do believe in it, behave as if they do not, too. When they get sick, they go to a doctor to save their lives just as I do.
The least selfish thought I have about my eventual demise is immodest. I worry about how sad my family and a few close friends will be when I die. It's going to make them sad and lonely and that makes me feel worse for them than for me.
My doctor asked if anyone in my family had had cancer of the colon. I said my mother died of it.
"You better have a colonoscopy then," he said.
"Yes," I said, "but my mother was 94 when she died."
"Well," my doctor said. "You don't want to die of it when you're 94, either, do you?"
I had the colonoscopy. Now I'm worried that the New England Journal of Medicine will publish a report saying that colonoscopies cause cancer of the colon.
A few years ago, I spoke in Columbus, Ohio, to an auditorium filled with about 2,000 members of some gerontological group. I told them that there's no doubt you lose some memory as you get older but, if you're lucky, you make up for it with experience. You get to know more.
For instance, I said, I ate in a restaurant in Columbus the night before and wished I could remember the name of it because with the experience I had, I want to remember not to eat there again.
You have to think of ways to prevent age from depressing you in the middle of the night. Loss of memory is depressing and I've developed a theory that explains it in so satisfactory a manner that it no longer bothers me.
My theory is that the brain has a finite capacity. It can hold just so much information. When you get to be my age, you've put so much into it that your head overflows with facts and every time you add a name or a piece of information, it forces a comparable fact OUT of your brain.
That's where the things go that I can't remember.
It's not my age.
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