The worst parts of growing older, for me, aren’t about the deaths of older generations, the major surgeries to replace disgruntled joints, or even the sending of children off to college for the first time.
Rather, it’s the incessant, nagging, cranky irritants. Stuff like realizing too late when in a restaurant’s restroom after breakfast that someone let the toilet paper expire and the extra rolls are stacked on a shelf overhead.
When younger, who cared? You jumped up, casting caution – and humiliation – to the wind, your legs strong as maple trees, the spring in your step as light as April, and reached (no rotator cuff tendonitis back then!) for the emergency supply. At 76, however, the effort to launch is as risible as a NASA moon liftoff sans solid rocket booster.
Or when the side you’re sleeping on wakes at night complaining, “Hey, Rick, you replaced my hip twenty years ago, and you’re asking me to support your bloated body for two hours? Can a squished, tucked-under arm, arthritic knee, and flake-red rusty hip joint catch some relief?”
Or take a recent three-and-a-half-hour flight to Phoenix for a quick family vacation (instead of spending time and money on presents – it’s a terrific alternative!). Trying to curtail ingesting liquids so I wouldn’t have to pee on board, I took as many prescription and OTC meds as possible before boarding.
However, crossing Missouri into Kansas (or was it Nebraska into Colorado?), the inevitable pelvic pressure pushed me out of my seat, past my wife in the middle seat and the woman in the aisle seat.
As to the latter, let me describe her setup. Her phone, on which she was watching a movie, was held by a plastic, well, thing, attached to her tray table. On her lap curled a winter coat she hugged as lovingly as a large, warm, furry Golden Retriever.
When realizing that she had to pause her movie and wake up her canine coat, her face expressed a horror commensurate to the captain announcing a water landing on the Snake River. However, she shifted into the aisle after assuring me her phone would stay attached.
Squeezing by her movie theater, I somehow disconnected the phone, catching it like an easy ground ball. Standing there like an open-palmed pickpocket caught in the act, all I could do was smile guiltily and hand it over to the self-satisfied cop.
After rolling from seat to seat down the aisle like a red-nosed W.C. Fields, I made it to the stern toilets. Stepping inside, I folded closed the door, locked it, and a light switched on. Back here, it felt like the plane had met a hurricane, tornado, or been set down on a roller coaster. Trying to pee standing up, I’d water the whole lawn, so to speak.
Barely able to turn around, I pulled down my pants, gave into gravity, and carefully aimed for the toilet, a bombing target smaller than my grandmother’s silver sewing thimble.
Reader, I have not lied to you yet, nor do I prevaricate now. The very zeptosecond my fanny landed on the seat, the intercom cackled: “Uh, ladies and gen’lmen, we’re runnin’ into a little turb’lence. Seatbelt signs’re back on. Like y’all to return to yer seats. If yer in the lav’tory, please hold onto whatever ya went there to do.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t that specific, but I complied and held on for the rest of the trip.
It’s the New Year, reader. Like me, try your best to keep a grip and wait for a safe landing.
• Rick Holinger’s chapbook of poetry, Down from the Sycamores, is available at Amazon and http://finishinglinepress.com. His short fiction collection, Unimaginable Things, is forthcoming in winter, 2026. North of Crivitz (poetry), and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences(essays) are available at local bookstores and Amazon. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com. More information at www.richardholinger.com.