Aging Reality

Everyone told Mildred that she shouldn’t feel bad about getting older, that it’s a privilege denied to many.
The golden age fell upon her like the shite of a bird on a wire. She’d become a little more round across the middle, however she kept eating foods she hated and drank things she disliked in miniscule amounts hoping that she’d drop a few pounds of lard and not look like a total pink-haired heifer.
The sagging wrinkles indicated where her sarcastic smile once lived. Her limbs couldn’t move like they once used to and her clumbsiness made her fall on her hip a lot. She often bruised her forehead badly too and folks nicknamed her lumpy. She hated that. Although she aquired quite a bit of gold over the years she traded her jewelry in for a life-alert necklace. Her family rarely came to visit. She adored that electronic honing device because it talked to her.
Mildred rocked the fashion world with her green, gargantuan, orthopedic shoes even though they made her feet look like giant blocks of frozen spinach. Sometimes she’d go on outings with a herd of other grizzled seniles and she’d brag about how many ailments she gathered over the years. She laughed about how she evaded death. Old age didn’t feel as bad when she considered the alternative.
Younger folks tried to make Mildred feel a little bit better about the whole fogey process. She felt okay about it for many years, until she saw other elders dealing with severe pain, throwing their butt truffles on the floor and peeing all over themselves and the carpet.
That’s when she realized it wasn’t really a privilege.