Getting old sucks
Sure it's great getting old when it means a driver's license and legal bourbon purchases. And chest hair, can't forget the chest hair. But in the end it sucks. Your ears start growing hair. You go out for dinner and a movie, have a great time with your sweetie then go right to bed, too tired for sex. You get wrinkles, liver spots and a gut when your matabolism decides to change from hummer to hybrid. And at the end of the day, no matter how carefully you diet, exercise and watch your fiber intake, you're going to die.
But before that, you'll have to pee. You'll have to pee a lot. Back in the day I could work eight hours and not feel a peep from my bladder. Two a day was all it took. I could drink beer then go outside and put out forest fires. Now I pee three or four times a day and once at night. And that's without beer.
But this weekend I was at Mid Ohio working the Grand American Road Racing Championship. I wear a fire rated suit when I work races, just in case I should have to get a driver out of a burning race car. It happens. But the suit is hot, and when it's ninety degrees outside and humid, you get really hot. So we drink. Lake Erie's directors ordered us to drink, and as I like cold water I drank. Every hour down went another bottle. But I wasn't peeing. Didn't have to.
But at night it cooled off, and I went to sleep exhausted from a long day in the sun. Until my bladder woke me up. I trundled off to the blue room and began to do my business.
So I peed. And I peed some more. And still more. I started getting tired from all the emission. Suddenly I was twenty-two again with a bladder capable of refilling a diesel. I was ready for forest fires, ready for name writing, and damned worried about the fluid capacity of a porta-john. I was Secretariat!
So I got to thinking that maybe it wasn't my bladder that's so much smaller but my aging brain deciding that I need to stay closer to home. I think it figured I was hot and it might need the excess fluids for sweat. So it clamped down on the old tank sensor until it was cool outside and I was at rest. Then it felt safe enough for me to let my water go.
Still, I wish it would do that all the time. I rally wish it would save it for when I'm at the hockey game, standing in the urinal making the guy next to me think he has a walnut for a bladder. I really do. Granted, the distinction is useless, but when you're gray and getting fatter you grab for all the guy points you can get.