By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.

For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.

Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.

For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.

Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

“Who was that masked man?”

– The Lone Ranger

I’ve learned the past year that it’s possible to forget what someone looks like without a mask, as well as to marvel at the face of someone I’ve never seen without one. In the grocery store where I work four days a week, masks have been omnipresent for over a year now, especially among those of use who work there, euphemistically called ‘associates.’

I wear a mask because I’m required to, and because I care about my community, my family, and bringing this all to some kind of end. But I don’t like it. In this case, ‘hate’ is not too strong a work. My glasses fog up. I breathe my own spittle. And I often wonder, as we enter the post-vaccination stage, how long we’ll have to keep wearing them, and how much of it is requirement and how much is conditioning. I imagine we’ll find out as states begin to eliminate mask mandates and companies follow suit. I will add, with emphasis, that not getting the flu last year was a big plus. Masks are uncomfortable and often annoying, but they have helped us minimize our contagious disease transmission to an amazing level.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

At sixty-two, not having to hoist my leg over a bicycle bar is a relief. I’m not worried about body parts, just about getting my leg that high.

It hit me recently when I was out looking for a new bicycle. I told the young man working at the store that I was mostly concerned with comfort. I’m not trying out for the Tour de France, and I don’t imagine myself riding in that event, unlike many of the people I see zipping around the New Jersey countryside with brand names on their backs and Spandex hugging them more tightly than a human ought to be hugged. I’m just a guy who lives in the woods and wants to get my heart rate up a few times a week by circling the back roads of my rural community.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Time is not so much an arrow as a comet we ride, streaking across the sky. We only think it drags because we’re on it, like riders saddling imaginary horses that stand stock still while the ground moves beneath us.

The good news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. The bad news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. When I was twenty, I never imagined being forty. It seemed so far away from that youthful ground I stood upon with naive bravado. Then when I hit forty, I thought fifty would be the last milestone to publicly mark, quietly retiring birthday observations with the exception of a few close friends and family. And finally, when I approached the age when referring to oneself as a senior becomes culturally appropriate, I decided I could at minimum look forward to collecting a monthly stipend for my troubles. We should all be paid for getting old, at least those of us lucky enough to live that long.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I’m reprinting this column as an annual tradition, knowing that the current pandemic has altered the reality it presents for all of us. But the fun of Halloween remains and its pleasures will return someday. Nothing can keep a good witch down!

October has always been my favorite month. It’s the month when autumn really makes its presence felt, especially if you live where the seasons are discernible. (It recently went from air conditioner weather at the tail end of a relentlessly hot summer, to a sudden and unexpected freeze with a 30-degree drop). It’s flu season, which is always good for a sick day or two spent lying on the couch taking over-the-counter cold remedies that do nothing to stop you from feeling like death is close by. Honey, is the healthcare directive in place? You’re sure you’ve still got your copy? And how about the will? Can I change it by tomorrow? My sister forgot my birthday, I’m not sure she deserves the belt buckles.