Parts

One of the interesting things about getting older is that you find out where all your inside parts are, what they do, and what can go wrong with them.

When you are a kid, you have no idea where important parts, like your liver or epiglottis, are or what they do. By the age of six, however, you figure out that if you fall off of almost anything while on concrete, you scrape exposed knees and elbows and often bleed.

At six, you don’t know or care what blood does, its composition, or its origin. To a kid, the important things are if anyone sees you fall, how bad the owie is, and if bandages or stitches are required. Often screaming loudly whether in pain or not will often bring adults running and continuing to whimper long after the wound has been cleaned and medicated will result in a more impressive bandage to show off to the other kids.

As you age, the parts you didn’t even know you have start to misfire, creak, and leak. Things that should be down, like blood pressure and cholesterol, goes up. Things that should be up, like energy and muscle strength, go down. Seems like someone could figure out how to get these parts to meet in the middle, work out an exchange, and let you go about your business.

The space in the medicine cabinet where you once stored perfumes and after-after shave is now taken up by all kinds of over-the-counter and prescription drugs to keep your parts lubed, soothed, charging and discharging.

Some of us have added cumbersome appendages, like canes and walkers. Oh, bother. Some of us have gotten new parts, like hips, or upgraded the old parts with internal gadgets like pace-makers.

I’m just glad most of my parts still work and there are options to fix the others that don’t.

I’m also glad that strawberry ice cream is medicinal. What? It isn’t? Sorry, I can’t hear you, can’t find the volume control on this ear thing!

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords