Unaided ears like mine

I spent a higher ratio of my time with old people today than normal. I went to gym early, which I usually hate doing; I have no 'gym friends' and personally would prefer to keep it that way - and at 8am in the morning all the pensioners are down there doing like half a kilometre an hour on the treadmill while complaining loudly about the public health system to anyone who will listen, especially unaided ears like mine. So while I'm festering in my own sweat in my little gym shorts these old ladies are giving me a taster of what I have to look forward to in my old age: a life of doctors waiting rooms, Millers change rooms and dining rooms eating and drinking away my retirement with a bad hip and a thousand cats. 


Next up was the doctors, waiting moodily with my arms across over my body in a lame attempt to keep the germs that survive on the magazines from 1999 out of my system. Old people come and go, limping and wheezing and holding xrays to the window as they wait to hear the news about their bung so-and-so. Doctors oozing with smarm worm their way through their patients with enough 'sweeties' and 'darlin's' to make me gag and receptionists raise their voices politely to the ancient couple opposite me who pay no attention. On the other end of the spectrum, and the room, there are two small children, playing with the lame collection of plastic toys in a wicker basket in the corner with blatant disregard for the hygiene of the mangy things while their mother tries in vain to hold their attention with a tattered picture book. A little girl points at me and I hate everything and everyone, right down to the smell of antiseptic hand wash and the perfect blow wave on the head of the 40-something receptionist. 


I think that I was born old. Not in a cool way either like Benjamin Button but in the way that I have all the meticulousness and anxieties of old age but in the body and decisions of a teenager. And I feel all the short circuits in my head causing problems but the young lady in me can't reconcile with the old one and I keep moving with the same idea like some kind of mantra.