A Cup of Conversation, March 2014 – by Michael Kell
One key to growing old gracefully is limiting television to network evening news and the Turner Classic Movie channel. Network anchors are all attractive, middle-aged or older men and women. Most commercial spots on the news sell pharmaceuticals to older, attractive men and women. Teenagers, twenty-something’s and even thirty-something’s are pretty much absent, making the process of denial so much easier. Unfortunately, even basic cable has dozens of channels—each showcasing a thousand opportunities to compare oneself to someone younger…way younger. It’s inescapable. Growing older is not so much the problem, as watching the world population get younger.
I prefer exercising at the old man’s gym, as my nineteen-year-old daughter enjoys pointing out. Keep laughing, honey, you may want to rethink the tanning bed. This youth-worshiping culture is far crueler to women than men. My mother pointed that out to me years ago. It’s not fair but accurate. Women start fretting about losing their bloom after the first child, men not until middle-age. Why is that, anyway? The answer is not a noble one. I’m pretty sure this obsession with youth is not going away any time soon. We’re stuck with it until grey hair becomes a badge of honor again. Hopefully our great-grandchildren will joke about us injecting snake-venom into our wrinkles and fat from the hips into the lips. Having said this I wouldn’t mind someone discovering a cure for baldness. My wife says I’m holding up fine but what’s she going to say? I’d settle for a slow retreat.
I avoid the mirror more and more. Is that normal? In the morning I’m perfectly willing to shave in a dimly-lit bathroom and quite comfortable with a foggy mirror. Mary is always coming behind me turning on the brightest light. I don’t have the nerve to ask her why. I try to catch the look on her face when she flips the switch but she’s too quick for me.
There is nothing more pathetic than celebrity refusing to grow old gracefully. In the face and body business, when you’re done, you’re done. The few classy ones know this and tabloids leave them alone. It must be an unspoken rule, a merciful one, like honoring a wounded soldier on the battlefield of vanity. When stars use plastic surgery to stay in the game, the game is over. There’s nothing wrong with a little nip n’ tuck but falling from People Mag’s sexiest person alive to becoming invisible to teenagers must be gut-wrenching. Maybe that’s why Paul Newman chose to spend his golden years out of the spot light? Creating salad dressing recipes in his kitchen and building his global, non-profit brand to benefit world causes was the wise choice. That handsome, ageless face now lives in perpetuity in every cupboard in America. How interesting.
I’m having dinner at a restaurant as I write this column. The family is out of town so I’m dining alone. To my immediate right are five octogenarian women discussing the same side-effects the drug commercials disclose in speed-talk. To my left is a sweet old couple chewing the chicken and dumplings alarmingly slow. I can’t tell if it’s just careful chewing or making hay of the last real pleasure in life. The polite woman-child server is moving lightning quick without breaking a sweat. I’m somewhere metaphorically in the middle but probably closer to slow chewing than lightning quick. I resign myself to the inevitable. However, after dinner I’m going to purchase all low-wattage, soft light bulbs for the master bath.
Be good not bitter.
GoodBean owner Michael Kell
Michael Kell is co-owner of GoodBean Coffee in Jacksonville.
Michael is a coffee entrepreneur and sometimes author living with his wife and family in the Pacific Northwest. For more articles like this one, please visit