when i am old…

When I am old I will still be polite. I may wear a purple dress and a clashing red hat as the poem suggests. I may act silly and teach my grandchildren an inappropriate poem about the monkey’s hinder being chopped in a grinder. As well as the one about the hearse going by and you might be the next to die… I am sure their preschool teachers will be appalled. I will be polite when they call to talk to me about it.

I may not answer the phone when my children call at 6am. I’d like that time to putter and write – to drink tea in my pjs and read on my porch swing.  However, at 10am when I am ready to face the day I will listen to them with empathy. Their problems may just sound like silly complaints by then. I will have lived through much of what they are anxious about and by then I may have the wisdom to know that things just have a way of working themselves out. I will listen and try to give them peace.

I will be stubborn and bullheaded with my doctors. I already am. I don’t like needles and I do like pain meds — I know enough to stay away from both. However, I promise to take care of myself. I will do what I can to stay strong and healthy. When I need the help of a doctor I will not make excuses and procrastinate. I know it would only cause my loved ones more worry than will be necessary.

I may feel less inhibited when I am old. There was a study a few years back that says that old people do. So I may go skinny dipping at night, or wear glitzy embarrassing bifocals too low on my nose, or dress up for Halloween in a witch costume and scare the neighbor kids to death. I won’t think up the rudest thing possible to say and then blurt it out in the most hurtful of ways. That is not being uninhibited, that is being rude and like I said when I am old I will still be polite.

I am writing all this down now so that when I am old my children can print it and bring it to me and remind me of my promise. When I am old I will still be polite.