I'm Not Gonna Lie (9 page)

I started at the top.

Smart.

I inhaled; I exhaled, swung my arms, and walked down the stairs.

That's one rep.

I walked up the stairs.

Two reps.

I walked down the stairs.

Three reps.

I walked up the stairs.

Four reps.

I gasped. I panted. I held on to the wall for support. Sweat gushed off me, soaked through all my clothes. I felt like I had just stepped out of the shower. I put my hands on my hips and walked in a circle. I took a deep breath, summoned up all my strength, and went back down the stairs.

About halfway, I tasted bacon.

I hadn't eaten bacon in three months.

I slowed way down.

With the bacon taste filling my mouth, I took the stairs one at a time as if I was five years old. Or like I was eighty.

Then a thought shot into my head.

“Why am I doing this? I'm not gonna live long enough to be in great shape.”

But I had to get to the bottom.

I looked down. I felt dizzy. My vision blurred. But I was determined to finish. Pressing my hand against the wall, I took another step. And another. And one more.

Almost there.

Just three more stairs.

It's always the last three stairs. Those last three are killers. If they made flights of stairs without those last three, everybody would be happier.

I know this: When I build my own house, I'm gonna design it with three less stairs than everybody else's house.

So, bottom line, after that day, I gave up walking the stairs. No more walking that flight of fifty steps from upstairs to the guesthouse and back, five times every morning, every day, the way I almost did, well, once.

Instead, I do what I call inadvertent workouts, which I find just as effective and strenuous.

If I'm in the living room and I have to go upstairs to get my wallet, that's one rep.

If I'm upstairs and I want to get my phone charger that I left in the kitchen, that's a half.

Hey, it adds up.

THE
AARP found me. They sent me a whole packet with a magazine and information about health insurance and other stuff you need to know after you turn fifty, as well as a bunch of wonderful senior-citizen discount coupons. They also included my very own personalized AARP card welcoming me to the club. At first I was pissed, because this packet made my age so
official.
But I quickly accepted it. What am I gonna do? I'm fifty. I'm not gonna lie about it.

This AARP, man, they are on it. They don't go away. They track every old person. They're like bloodhounds. I got my AARP card before I got a birthday card from any of my friends. I don't know how they do it. They must have spies. They must hire people in the neighborhood who work undercover posing as the guy next door. You know who I mean. The guy who's always mowing his lawn or washing his car.

“Hello? AARP hotline? Yeah, listen, my neighbor George Lopez has been acting strange. Lethargic. Despondent. Morose. I found out he's turning fifty in three weeks. Yeah, I'm sure. Get him.”

They are so on it. If somebody you know over fifty disappears, don't call the cops. You're wasting your time. Call the AARP. They'll find him in a minute.

The AARP emphasizes how important it is for people over fifty to take control of their health. It's crucial for us older people to watch what we eat and drink, because our bodies change. We have to monitor what we put into them.

When I was in my twenties, I never thought about what I was gonna eat. My guys and I used to have eating contests. We'd go to Bob's Big Boy and we'd see who could eat the most food. The losers bought the winner's meal. Or
meals.
We'd go to Big Boy because it was close and they served a ton of food.

We'd start with an order of chili and spaghetti, which was a light dish consisting of spaghetti and marinara sauce piled high on a plate topped with a half-pound slab of flame-broiled hamburger and then covered with a glob of chili and cheese, served with a salad. Lose the salad. We substituted fries.

That was the appetizer.

Then we'd all get Super Big Boy Combos, two all-beef patties on a grilled sesame seed bun with lettuce, tomato, American cheese, dressing, and special relish. That was the regular combo. The
super
combo, which is the one we got, added fifty percent more meat and doubled the cheese. This came with a salad, too. Lose the salad. We substituted fries.

Next we got their famous chicken breast sandwich—grilled chicken on a sesame seed bun, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, special sauce, and, yes, a salad—lose the salad; we substituted fries.

If you're weren't full yet, you got another chicken breast sandwich, more fries, and another Big Boy Combo, and then, of course, dessert, usually their “decadent” hot-fudge cake, which was a delicate palate cleanser to end this light meal: scoops of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two layers of devil's food cake, smothered in a river of hot fudge, and covered with a cloud of whipped cream.

We washed it all down with thick milk shakes.

I never won. I never came close. I barely made it past round one of the chili spaghetti and a few sips of the milk shake. At the end, we'd all chip in and pay the winner's check while he was off in the bushes “digesting” his food.

I can't imagine someone over fifty suggesting an eating contest. I can barely finish the food I order.

“Hey, George, you know what would be great? How about we get a group of guys together, go to Big Boy, and have an eating contest? Gorge ourselves. Get really sick. Like back in the day. Come on; it'll be
fun.
”

“Are you crazy? I don't have any Prilosec on me. Hell, there's not enough Prilosec in the world.”

I've never been a big eater. As a kid I developed a strong gag reflex. I can tell immediately when something is not fresh. I'm like a food psychic. I think it's from seeing the milk carton change color in our refrigerator. Forget about lettuce changing color, going from green to brown. Yes, I've seen the milk
carton
change color. You knew the milk was bad. You didn't need to smell it. You could see it.

“Grandma, this milk is bad.”

“Then don't taste it. Just swallow it. Drink it fast. Close your eyes.”

I'm not a big drinker anymore, either. Another sign of age. I've become a lightweight. You drink differently when you're in your twenties. You haven't really lived yet, so you haven't truly experienced sorrow. Life is all fun. You don't have anything to be mad at. You go out with friends, you barhop, you eat, you get drunk, and you're extremely happy. You hug your friends. You laugh. You dance. You kiss everybody. You have a great time. The next morning you wake up and you think, “Wow, what a night. What a great time.” You take a shower and you're good as new. Your body recovers quickly, because it's still making melatonin and creating endorphins and firing on all cylinders. You go to work and look forward to the weekend, when you can get drunk and happy all over again.

When you get older and drink, you black out. You wake up with a tremendous headache. It feels like a guy is inside your head blasting through your brain with a jackhammer. You can barely move. Your whole body throbs. Your skin hurts. Your hair hurts. Your eyebrows hurt. The thought of food disgusts you. You swear you'll never drink again. Your blood pressure shoots through the roof because you forgot to take your Norvasc or your beta-blocker or whatever medicine you're on. You sit up and the room spins. You fall back down and slam the pillow over your face. Then you start to remember details from the night before and you get depressed, because you realize you said things you should not have said and you shouted and cried and pocket-dialed somebody and threw up in the corner and now you can't face the day and you are beyond miserable.

Yes, I've been there, and I vowed I would never go back there again. I have to be careful when I drink for all those reasons. Hard liquor puts me in that dark place. Now I nurse maybe one vodka and cranberry juice and call it a night. Anything else is too heavy. I can't do cream drinks. No White Russians or Baileys, nothing like that. Gives me heartburn. Or maybe I'm lactose intolerant. That could be it. Or gluten. It might be gluten. Somebody told me I was allergic to gluten. I know there's gluten in booze, especially in brandy and beer. I'm getting to the point that I don't care anymore.

I know I could handle a couple of beers, but I won't do it. I'm too vain. Beer is way too fattening. I don't want to wake up one morning with a big stomach hanging over my pajama bottoms.

When you turn fifty, you have to change your lifestyle. You don't have a choice. You're no longer a kid and your body can't handle the stuff it once did. I understand that everybody needs an outlet and people want to escape. I get that. But it's too late. You had your fun. I know change is hard, but you have to start taking care of yourself.

If you can't do it on your own, get help. Some cultures like to get everybody involved—family, friends, coworkers, clergy, the entire community. They have what's called an intervention. That's when twenty people rally around a person who has an issue with drugs or alcohol and lovingly confront him.

We're the opposite. In our culture, you couldn't get twenty people to come together
unless
you gave them drugs and alcohol. We don't have interventions. We have parties. We don't want some violent, obnoxious drunk spoiling our party. Other cultures say, “Let him in. We'll intervene, make him confront his addiction. Perhaps we can convince him to seek professional help. Bring him in.”

We say, “Get that asshole out. He drinks all our beer. Then he gets loud and obnoxious and picks fights and steals our stuff. I've got my TV in here. He's a whack job. Keep him the hell
out
.”

We're not unsympathetic. We just keep them out and hope they get fixed on their own . . . while we party.

I took an interesting path. No intervention, of course. I started drinking way early, and I was the last of my friends to smoke pot. I was only an occasional pot smoker. I never got into other drugs very much—well, okay, except for pills a little bit, because there were so many of them around the house. To be honest, I really like pills. I don't pop them like Pez or anything. In fact, I rarely take a whole pill. I'm fine with a half.

I do have a favorite. Vicodin. Fantastic. My go-to drug. I once said, “I was gonna take yoga, but then I found some Vicodin lying around the house, so I took those.”

I take Vicodin to loosen me up and lessen my aches and pains. I like to pop a half in the morning right before my shower so when I get out of the shower, I'm ready to face the day. And if I've taken a Vicodin and I happen to catch a glimpse of myself naked under my robe, it doesn't freak me out so much. Try it. But just a half.

If I am completely honest, I'd admit that I take half a Vicodin once in a while to dull the pain of getting old. Turning fifty is such a jolt to the system that you don't need reminders every minute. But it seems as if there are so many signposts that appear in front of you so often that you can't avoid having a reminder of your age constantly shoved in your face.

One example: the early-bird special.

I used to see a sign outside a restaurant advertising the early-bird special, and I would drive right by without giving it a second thought. Now when I see a sign that says, EARLY
-
BIRD
SPECIAL
FROM
4
TO
6
P
.
M
.
FRIED
CHICKEN
,
TWO
SIDES
—$1.99
, I think, “Four to six? I gotta come back for that.”

If the early-bird triggers that response, you're old.

Another sign that tells you that you've turned fifty is memory loss. I hate it when I'm with friends and they start getting nostalgic, talking about the good old days, and someone invariably says, “Hey, George, remember when you did this . . . ?” or, “Remember that time when we . . . ? That was hilarious.” I smile like an idiot and nod knowingly, even though I have no idea what they're talking about. I'm down to remembering one out of every three stories, at most.

I'm also forgetting where I left things. People try to be helpful. They say, “Where was the last place you put it?”

If I could remember the last place I put it, I would know where it is now. Because the last place I put it is where it is.

The worst is when you actually have the object you're going to use in your hand, and you don't know what it's doing there or what you were about to do with it.

“I see the phone in my hand, but who was I gonna call?”

I guess a sure sign of dementia would be looking at the phone in your hand and saying, “What is this in my hand? What the hell am I supposed to do with it? What does this thing do?”

I also think—and this scares me the most—that I'm going blind because I text too much. I'm sure an FDA study will be coming out any minute telling us that texting causes blindness. The other day I got a beep indicating that I had a new text message. I picked up my phone and looked at the screen . . . and I could not read it. It was too blurry and too small. I squinted at it. I brought the phone an inch from my face. Didn't help. Then I moved my head back, stretched my arms out as far as I could. Made no difference. I turned the phone to the left, to the right, and upside down. I still could not read the text. I got very frustrated.

“I can't read this, you stupid piece of
shit
!” I shouted, which was not cool, because I was in a restaurant.

I gave in. I fumbled in my bag for my glasses, which are progressives, found them, and put them on. I read the text, saw it clearly. It was from my friend RJ. I called RJ to tell him the sad news.

“I need a new phone,” I said.

“Why? You just got that phone.”

“I couldn't read the text you sent me. What did you do, put it in some tiny midget font to mess with me?”

“I didn't do anything to the font. It's your eyes.”

“What are you talking about? My eyes are twenty-twenty. And I just paid a fortune for these fancy glasses.”

RJ hesitated. I could tell he was trying to think of a delicate way to break some bad news to me.

“George,” he said. “Your eyes are . . . old. You're getting old man's eyes.”

“Old man's eyes, my ass. It's this texting. If you text, you go blind. They just did a study—”

“Come on. There's no study.”

“Fine,” I said. “I made up the study. But there should be a study.”

“Face it, George. You're over fifty. Your body is starting to go.”

“My body is starting to go,” I mumbled. “Is that all you got to say?”

“No,” he said. “Welcome to the club.”