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An age-old debate...

"Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough." –Groucho Marx "The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom." – H. L.
opinion_maxedout1

"Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough."

–Groucho Marx

"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

– H. L. Mencken

"Hope I die before I get old."

– Pete Townshend

"Gettin' old sucks!"

– Me

I don't know for sure what old is, but I suspect it shows up around the time life begins to take things away from you more often than it gives you new things. At some point, you realize a disproportionate number of your evenings out involve attending memorials for friends who have died... especially in this town.

But it's pointless to obsess about death because death is like your last final exam. As with other finals, giving it any thought until the last possible moment serves no useful purpose whatsoever; you'll forget everything when the time comes and you'll spend needless hours tormenting yourself. The only people who obsess about death are the keeners who never understood deadlines were something to make, not something to beat. Serves 'em right.

The first time I can remember giving my own death any thought was the first time a part of me died. The executioner was an endodontist — Latin for sadistic inflictor of unimaginable pain — and the victim was a lower molar.

At the moment of death, the moment she plunged her instrument into the nerve at the root's end of the suspect tooth, killing it dead, there was, just like they say, a white light at the end of a long tunnel through which I could see my dearly departed tooth swirling in the bowl.

I went home, had a wake for my tooth, self-anesthetised with good scotch, realized my dead tooth couldn't really enjoy the symbolism, got philosophical, finally understood grievin' is for the livin' not for the dead, passed out and paid a big price the next day when I had to get on with life with a large number of brain cells having joined my molar in the Great Hereafter. Can I get an Amen?

But aging and death obviously aren't the same thing. They're more akin to foreplay and climax which, while being acts more or less joined at the hip, aren't the same thing either. In the case of aging and death, the main difference is that this is one of those times even guys don't want to rush through foreplay.

Thus far, the indignities of aging seem to be manageable. I can deal with reading glasses; I can pretend the white hairs in my beard are actually, finally, blond coming through; I can fool myself into thinking everyone who skis and jogs feels like their knees are about to give birth by day's end.

And I can even live with the dread of what's lurking just around the corner which, based solely on advertising that's driven me away from network evening news, seems to be a life of incontinence, flatulence, erectile dysfunction, high cholesterol, higher blood pressure, acid reflux, and, of course, a generally frustrating battle with chronic constipation punctuated only by bouts of raging diarrhea, all of which work in concert, conspiring to turn me into the junkie I spent so much of my earlier life trying to avoid becoming. Can I get another Amen?

Like Bernard Baruch, I always considered old age as 15 years older than the age I was/am. The flaw in that highly subjective outlook is the theory of relativity. If I were living in, say, Sun City, I'd be considered the young punk the rest of my neighbours would be keeping an eye on.

But living in Whistler, I'm definitely the brother left behind on Earth in Einstein's relativity parable. I age every year while my brother, floating through space at the speed of light, ages hardly at all. Except my theoretical brother is actually the very real people I work with every year. And I don't have to wait a couple of decades to witness the startling results.

I grow demonstrably older every year. I know, it doesn't show; but it's true. Yet, the people I work with are always 22. Between Canada, Australia and the U.K., there seem to be an endless supply of fresh-faced 22 year-olds. If there weren't, Whistler Blackcomb would have to rethink its whole business model.

When I started working with them, lo those many years ago, it wasn't so bad. While I wasn't silly enough to think I was blending with my co-workers, they, at least, seemed to intuitively know it would be pointless to seek the wisdom of the ages from me.

Now, I'm older than their fathers. Still not wiser but....

So here I am, caught in what I like to think of as the awkward years. Too old for my peers, too young to be Googling retirement communities.

Not that I'm certain I'd want to. To be honest, I have a problem with the whole retirement thing. I don't feel old enough. If I were really old enough I wouldn't be doing what I do and living where I live. I'd be, well, more mature. And quite frankly, I'm not all that interested in being much more mature than I am.

But given the relative lack of success at building — oh God, I hate to use the word — seniors' housing in Whistler, I suspect aging-in-place is not part of my future. Don't laugh; it's not part of yours either.

I think I'm okay with that but I won't really know for a few more years since it's impossible to think about getting old enough to have old and infirm be inseparable adjectives describing me. It's more likely to be the barriers of infirmity than the indignities of age that run me out of town.

Whistler isn't a good town in which to be infirm. Ask any of the locals or tourists hobbling around on crutches. Hard, eh? Now imagine what it would be like pushing a walker. Sure, maybe we could outfit a walker with stubby little skis like Whistler Adaptive Sports Program uses on the end of ski poles but that would probably defeat the point of walkers... which is, as I understand it, to provide a "stable" base that doesn't slide out from under you.

And let's not overlook the fact that Whistler and Blackcomb, while riddled with overcrowded easy runs, is really all about the alpine — read steep and ungroomed — experience. Better to move to gentle rolling terrain like Sun Peaks than torment oneself with, say, West Cirque beckoning like a crippling siren.

Or maybe, since we're all getting older, we'll find a way to make aging in place in Whistler a reality. Soon. For my sake. ok, yours too. Do I hear a final Amen?