Most of my life I hung around older people, which always made me feel young. I never wanted to get old. We have no control over the number of years we live, but I do think we can strive to stay young. So……I’m careful about the foods I eat; I try to get enough sleep; I work on getting exercise; I surround myself with positive, fun people; I pray and spend time in spiritual reading; I volunteer time and money to those places I feel my gifts might be of service and I attempt to keep up-to-date with what’s happening in our community. Part of staying young, in my mind, was keeping up-to-date with technology, until technology took off and left me behind. I don’t know what a tweet is and don’t have the time or gumption to figure it out. Instagram is too much — I already have Facebook and don’t understand the difference or want to take the time to research. I’m getting older I suppose, but still striving to stay as much up-to-date and young as possible. But……..I felt real old after my recent shopping trip to the outlet mall in Washington, PA. My Cuddl Duds dared to stretch out at the bottom of my legs after only 20 years of wear and so I decided to replace them. I entered some store that sells outdoor clothing and started to look around. A very nice looking, physically fit, young gentleman asked me if he could help me. I should have gone with my gut reaction and said, “No thank, just looking around,” but I didn’t. Instead I asked if they had long underwear — wrong choice of words. He looked at me incredulously and said, “long underwear?” As my face turned red I fumbled for words and replied, “like Cuddl Duds?” The light seemed to go on in his head and he said, “Are you looking for a base layer?” Oh, so they’re base layers now — I can imagine his conversation at home over dinner — some old lady came in asking for long underwear today!!
Note to self: best to keep your mouth shut, realizing you are wonderfully God-made, but old.