Noth­ing casts doubt on one’s acquired wis­dom like eco­nom­ic imbe­ciles and experts on aging. As a coun­ter­mea­sure, I rec­om­mend the mantra of Dec­cie, a twelve-old char­ac­ter in my favourite crime nov­el series: they “just don’t under­stand the fun­da­men­tals”.

 Com­bine that with Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Ursu­la Van der Leyen’s obser­va­tion that there seems to be “… no order in the dis­or­der,” and you’ve cracked the prob­lem of try­ing to fig­ure out why he-whose-name- I‑have-declared-unwor­thy-of-men­tion this week, imposed tar­iffs that make no sense to any­one else and he can­not jus­ti­fy coherently.
The aging experts aren’t on that lev­el, but in an arti­cle head­lined:“4 Weird Signs You’re Get­ting Old­er”, they did beg for coun­ter­points.
As some­one who falls into their cat­e­go­ry of research, I think what they con­sid­er “weird” is actu­al­ly more in line with what Mr Tar­iff-is-a-Beau­ti­ful-Word decid­ed­ly is not, which is to say, explicable.
The expert con­clu­sion of seri­ous stud­ies is that as you age,  you’ll shrink (and keep shrinking).
If I look a lit­tle short­er than  I used to, it’s mere­ly a case of my body doing a lit­tle relo­ca­tion. Some bits of it now make me wider, which there­fore makes me looks less high.
If I was shrink­ing I’d be turn­ing into the arche­typ­i­cal “lit­tle old man”, a near slur I nat­u­ral­ly feel com­pelled to treat the same way my coun­try and Green­land did He-Who-is-Not-to-be-Mentioned’s idea of annexation.
Also, lit­tle old men are often derid­ed as “grumpy”. Okay, that does apply in my case, espe­cial­ly when it comes to “him”.
Anoth­er alleged weird­ness is low­er teeth being shoved out of line, which is part of the wear and tear from things like grind­ing them.
Again, what’s age got to do with it? My teeth grind every time on-air reporters start sen­tences with vari­a­tions of “So yeah, I mean, you know” and add in “obvi­ous­ly” when­ev­er possible.
The same hap­pens when I hear the cur­rent White House press spokesper­son say  impor-ant for impor­tant, which she seems com­pelled to use to describe every action and utter­ance of her boss.
Being an invet­er­ate news imbiber, it’s a won­der my teeth are there at all at this stage. 

              WEAKER  ISN’T WEIRD

Speak­ing of speech, the experts con­clud­ed that with age, vocal chords often become thin­ner and less sup­ple, which is why men’s voic­es can become weak­er and raspier.
Ever since I retired and spend more time hang­ing around the house than barg­ing about the world, my near­est and dear­est claim I’m becom­ing increas­ing­ly less audible.
That’s got noth­ing to do with age.
When I was work­ing, peo­ple went so far as to  turn on their radio or TV.to lis­ten to what I had to say.
When you’ve only got mun­dane obser­va­tions or annoy­ing opin­ions to impart, it’s hard­er to get an audi­ence. But if peo­ple have to say “par­don” because they didn’t catch it all, you get to say every­thing twice. Which gives you half a chance of mak­ing your point.

                ON THE OTHER HAND

What’s gen­uine­ly weird about aging, main­ly because most of us are lucky enough to daw­dle through the major por­tion of our lives with­out need­ing them, is the increas­ing fre­quen­cy of  vis­it­ing doctors.
I’ve seen more med­ical peo­ple in the past five years than I did in the pre­vi­ous sev­en­ty. Not count­ing the ones in infan­cy and tod­dler­hood, which were inflict­ed by duti­ful par­ents, all but a few of the vis­its were or sports or stu­pid­i­ty injuries.
It’s also weird that doc­tors, who are are sup­posed to be mak­ing the vicis­si­tudes of aging eas­i­er to bear, keep dis­pens­ing warn­ings about the very  things that do so, espe­cial­ly decent Scotch and red wine.
It’s enough to make your teeth grind.
On the bright side, a recent study indi­cat­ed those vac­ci­nat­ed for shin­gles are 20 per­cent less like­ly to devel­op demen­tia in the sev­en years after­ward than those not vaccinated.
In the appar­ent assump­tion I’ve reached retire­ment age but not any stage of demen­tia, a tar­get­ed advert keeps pop­ping up on the online news sites I vis­it, invit­ing me to down­load “The Sev­en Secrets of High Net Worth Investors”.

Since it’s only for those with a mil­lion dol­lars to invest, would I be unjus­ti­fied in view­ing it as a scam for phish­ing old people’s finan­cial status?
In Ontario “cot­tage coun­try” where I spend my sum­mers, the rule of thumb is that the good con­trac­tors for repairs, improve­ment and sum­mer main­te­nance have to be booked months in advance. Any who claim  they can come right away are to be avoided.
That’s also how I feel about any invest­ment out­fit that seems to find it nec­es­sary to blind adver­tise every day.
Like  the Tar­iff-Impos­er-in-Chief and the aging experts, they “just don’t under­stand the fundamentals.”

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