Youthful Aging

When I was young I never thought about the end of it all. Life was lived for the minute. I did things just for the sheer personal gratitude and for the fun excitement that it brought.

When you are young you rarely think of the consequences of your behavior or how it effects other people. There is rarely any deliberate rebellion. Rebellion is just a sub- conscience reaction to things. A need to keep boredom at bay.

As you grow older spontaneity is a little less frequent. Life does not allow for the fun little “do for yourself” moments. Life is filled with the consequences and reminders of them. Not only do you not have the energy for rebelliousness, you just can’t find the time.

If you do something rebellious when you are older you are fully aware of what you are doing and how it will effect others.. And most of the time that is why you do it.. Of course that is unless you are intoxicated by some means. Then, of course, you are just plain not thinking at all.

With age comes responsibilities.. (how I yearn for youthful rebellion sometimes) Those “go out and get into mischief days” turn to things like eating a really large helping of your favorite ice cream when you know you shouldn’t have any at all or some other self destructive behavior. After all you don’t want to hurt anyone else. Well, most of the time anyway..

Another one of the things you never think about when you are young is your health. You don’t think about the massive amounts of alcohol you drink at a party as doing damage to your liver. Or the cigarette you smoke with your friends damaging your lungs or heart. You may know of those things but you really don’t think too much about it.

Women wear high heals that are wearing out your heal tendons and apply makeup to their youthful colorful complexions in the name of beauty and all that natural color disappears. . Many enjoy the laying out in the sun for hours with girlfriends getting a tan. Oops if you get a sun burn. It peels and heals and all is well again. You don’t think about a new freckle as a possible melanoma

You don’t think your music is too loud and you turn up your favorite songs a little more or opt for the concert seats right in front of the bands speaker towers at a concert.

Youthfulness is just naive about what the future holds.. After all who thinks they are going to be 50 years old when they are a kid.. I am sure I am not alone in thinking I would never live to get old.

Strangely enough like most everyone else I have gotten older. I am now starting to face the realities and consequences of my youth..

Nope, I can no longer drink like I use to.. The hangovers just about kill me.. Staying up all night, sleeping for 2 hours and doing it again is not even a second thought anymore. I know it is not going to happen.

I notice I am watching the lips of people I am speaking with more often to make up for the words I can’t hear as well due to all that music that wasn’t that loud in my past. That works pretty well only now my vision is getting a bit blurry too. So I have to read their lips from a little distance away.

When I get a bit of heart burn or strain a muscle in my arm and feel a bit of pain I start worrying is this what a heart attack is.. Should I go to the doctor and get checked out.. Is this the beginning of the end. Now when I get clumsy and fall on my knees I wonder are they going to heal this time or is the pain going to turn into arthritis and last for the remainder of my life.

I do have some really cool stuff now that I am older.. I have some nice uncool bills to go with them. I actually care if they get paid, more scary, I worry about them being paid on time. I never used to think about it as I played the bill collectors lottery when I was younger. Putting all the bills in a hat and pulling to see which one got paid. (You got me the shut off notice first.. Congratulations you’re the new winner of this months Bill Collectors Lottery!!)

I realize now that there is a future and am trying to save money for it. Which seems a bit fruitless most of the time.. There is always some expense waiting for me to save up a little money for the future, and takes me back back to start over again.

If find myself thinking of my high school friends and think about calling them up.. For some reasn I think they will remember me and everything will be just as it was.. Though it has been almost 30 years since high school.. Yeech 30 years.. Weird, I don’t feel at all like it has been that long.. It feels like only a couple years ago I was bar hopping and dancing all night going to concerts and baseball games. Not sleeping for days on end.

My mind is as sharp if not more so now than it was then.. But my body… I look in the mirror and wonder who that stranger is with the lines forming around the eyes and with the grey hairs popping up above and beyond all the rest as if to shout out. “You’re getting older stand up and be proud!”.

I find myself sitting back lost in the “I remember when”s, that I keep in silent sanctuary. What a youthful wild hell-cat I used to be..

Just to be spontaneous I decided to color my hair to get rid of those “hey look at me” greys. and buy a new outfit, some new shoes call up a few friends and go out to the local hot spot have a drink and do a bit of ‘Born to Be Wild’ dancing. But since I am old enough to know the consequences of such behavior I chose a different route.

I did color my hair, but I opted to save some money and stick with my comfortable jeans and tennis shoes; stay home and drink a couple glasses of wine. I know my friends will be too busy raising their families to go out and have a drink anyway. I think I will be rebellious and not answer the phone when it rings and for something really spontaneous, I think I might just call it an early night and pass on all my favorite commercials on TV and go to bed early.. I am kind of tired again tonight…

I hope I’m not getting sick *wink*

Sound Annoyance

Over the years people have really grown to depend on television for entertainment.. In early TV years commercials were live, as were many of the shows. Over the years Television programs as well as the companies that sponsored them became pre-recorded..

Now days television shows that last a hour really are much less due to the almost equal time of ads by the sponsors..

The amount of advertisements doesn’t really bother me too much. They give you a quick break for a run to the bathroom or kitchen. While other family members stay seated to watch all the sponsors of their favorite programs try to sell them everything from toilet paper to automobiles.

The television watching public has grown really used to watching these ads and is really not thinking much about it.. People frequently end up sleeping in front of the TV as they struggle to stay awake after a hard day at work to see their favorite shows. People have gotten so used to sleeping by the TV they sometimes have trouble falling asleep without it.. This never really seemed to be a problem in earlier years.

Lately there has become a problem with to combination of the television shows, advertisements and sleeping.. What is it that you ask???.

Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the ever changing volumes of the commercials. For a person like me, that mostly listens to shows while working on another project such as website updates or a hobby of some sort, the constant having to stop and change the volume is a growing nuisance The shows are always much lower in volume. As soon as a commercial comes on I have to stop what I am doing and change the volume down to a more tolerable level. Now it is getting so that you don’t have to change the volume only once when the commercial starts most of the tine you have to adjust for every commercial that comes on since all seem to be at a different levels.

I could be wrong but I thought there was a law against doing that. I am getting to the point where there are certain channels I avoid watching because it annoys me so much.

I thought the answer was getting a television that stated it had a sensor that would self adjust for the rise and fall of volume.. But for some reason on all three of my televisions this seems to be a feature that does not work.. Which makes no sense to me. How hard could it be to put a normalizing program into a one of many circuit boards that now fill our televisions.

Another problem is for those of us that have a spouse or family member that falls asleep every night at the side of their television set. It is a total annoyance getting waken up in the middle of the night by a sudden sound of a gun shot or explosion, the melody of some annoying jingle for sexual enhancement or some 800 number ad to talk to live beautiful girls that are no doubt not really beautiful at all.

Not only do these ads wake you up but then you can’t fall back to sleep until you go back down the stairs across the house to turn the volume down so that the program can no longer be heard.

Can nothing be done about this??? Not to mention what it is doing to the hearing of the person sitting in front of that loud noisemaker. And what about those little earphone devices they sell so you can listen to the television without disturbing the person next to you.. What are those loud ads doing to your ears with those??

Recently I thought it would be good to go out and get a nice surround sound system for my big screen tv.. I thought it would be nice to get that movie theater sound while watching my favorite shows.. Nope, what the surround sound seems to do is amplify certain parts of the background sounds of the movie louder than the voices. And come suddenly out of the speakers closest to where you are sitting.. Again making you jump for the volume controls..

It is enough to make you forget the words “for your viewing pleasure” all together. There is less and less pleasure watching that noise making box.

I find myself sitting in silence or listening to music on my computer while I am working quite often these days. My computer has a real nice little program that normalizes the volume of all the music I am listening to so I can actually get work done without interruption.

So the advertisers that think they are so crafty recording their ads at higher volume are beginning to hurt themselves. I am sure I am not alone in changing the channels or shutting off the TV in favor of some welcome quiet and peace of sound.

Maybe I will be looking into getting a stand alone DVR for my TV and I can record one night and watch the next day without commercial interruption..

I am guessing it will take someone suing over their hearing loss due to the problem to get the reality back into the viewing of programs on TV at normalized level..

If there happens to be any Television or advertising execs reading this.. I am no longer watching…or listening to the show sponsors. I like many other people I know if I have to turn down the volume during the ads, I turn it down low enough I don’t have to listen to any of them at all….