Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing

by Abigail Thomas

The label sounds condescending, all of us lumped together with lots of discounts

There are a lot of us elderly folk. We’re all different. Most of us have been through several kinds of hell and survived. Don’t smile at us as if we’re cute. Do not pat our hands or call us dear. We are your elders and possibly your betters. Take a moment. Look into our eyes. We know more than you do. A little respect, please.

Amen!!

Occasionally I fall asleep in the afternoon and wake up in the dark.

Terrible horrible heavy dread

and what she would say to the cop about no license and if she should just tell the truth, or maybe burst into tears, as tears were always on hand these days, what with everything and also nothing.

as tears were always on hand these days. Whew!

heard this all from a dentist sixty-five years ago, everything that might eventually become of my mouth if I didn’t get braces, but I was fourteen, I had no receptors for “eventually,” and I didn’t want braces. Besides, the tooth was barely out of place back in 1955. Eventually is finally here, but so is 2020. My tooth is just a distraction.

I had no receptors for 'eventually'. Nailed it!

She is quite capable of inventing worries when there are none. That ghastly episode with the head lice thirty years ago comes in handy; she has been imagining infestations

DREAD KEEPS TURNING UP like a long-lost cousin, a real pain in the ass, but family.

We are not my favorite animal, although there are many of us I love, and many millions more I fear for. I