I took one of those online tests today

I took one of those online tests today




I took one of those online tests today, you know the kind. You go to a website (in this case, it’s www.realage.com, you can try it yourself). Apparently it has been recommended by both Dr. Oz AND Oprah Winfrey, so it must be good, right? You answer a whole bunch of questions about your health, habits, diet, fitness, and relationships. Then they send you a Personalized Real Age and Plan to Improve (assuming that most of us are “older” than our real age, based on the kinds of good living questions included on the test. NO ONE can truthfully answer them all “correctly.”)



Anyhow, I was pleased to be able to report that I ALWAYS wear seat belts, my parents stayed together until I was at least 18, I quit smoking 40 years ago and I don’t get secondhand smoke, I’ve had my pneumonia vaccine, I eat lots of fruits and veggies, and I do some moderate amount of exercise and a bunch of other good stuff,too.



Of course, I also have metastatic cancer, have a BMI over 28, take more than 5 prescription drugs, and don’t go to church once a week. And those things must count for a BUNCH of bad points, because, ladies and gentlemen, RealAge has calculated, for my personal use and benefit, that while my actual age is 69.1 years, my REAL AGE is 91.6. Yes, ninety-one point six.



I’m as old as my neighbor Mr. Bradburn who still tills and plants a big garden every year and chops his own wood to heat his house. And who, by the way, also mows my grass—for free. So how bad can 92 be? Well, bad, because he also suffers from all kinds of ailments, so can you imagine what his Real Age would be?



Boy, RealAge really knows how to encourage a gal. My Real Age is 20+ years more than my chronological age, and the best they can do with suggestions for improvement is to lose weight, watch those drug interactions, and eat more complex carbohydrates! Hot diggity dag. Big help, they are. And if I do all those things, I can bring my Real Age down to 85. Yea!!!



I tell you one thing. I’m going to think twice before taking any more of those online questionnaires. It’s just too depressing, and that’s not good for my health! Although, come to think of it, I’m doing pretty darn well for a 92 year old.

Peggy's Prompt--Drinking Milk

“You’ll be drinking milk,” my mother said in response to my request for iced tea. We two girls always had to drink milk with our evening mean, which we called supper. Mama and Daddy drank iced tea, Mama with a little sugar and lemon, Daddy unsweetened. They always got lots of ice in their large iced tea glasses, whereas Mary and I had plain old pasteurized milk that you had to shake up to stir up the cream which had risen to the top. And our old fridge didn’t seem to keep the milk icey cold, like we liked it. So Mama would drop a single ice cube into each of our glasses of milk to make it colder (and more watery, I might add). It was just not fair. Milk for kids, iced tea for adults.




But that’s the way it was, back in the day. Whatever Mama said went. You could protest, you could argue, but you couldn’t win. Daddy always and forever took her side. They were nothing if not consistent. “Go ask your Mama,” Daddy would say if we asked for some favor. “What did your Daddy say?” she’d ask us when we went to her next. He said go ask your Mama. Well, then, I say no. You know we can’t afford it/it isn’t good for you/you’re too young/I’m your mother. Except for the “we can’t afford it” the reasons always seemed like excuses to us. But we can’t afford it always stopped us in our tracks. We were acutely aware of the shortage of money in our family. Not that we didn’t have a house (small), car (old), clothes (made by Mama), toys (a few), food (provided by Daddy the fisherman and Granddaddy the produce farmer and chicken farmer). But we never seemed to have any money.



When I was in first and second grade, my mother sent me to school with a brown bag lunch and a nickel for a Fudgesicle. When I was in third grade and asked for an allowance, she gave me a quarter each week, but I had to buy my own Fudgesicle. Somehow this was fair in her mind. But hey, looking back, I’m glad we girls had to drink our milk, and I’m no longer aggravated about the so-called “allowance.” She did the best she could and it was pretty great after all.

I Wanted to Laugh

He looked so comical in that get-up I just wanted to laugh. But laughing at Billy ain’t recommended. He ain’t much for being laughed at, that’s for sure. He can laugh at YOU plenty, but you best not laugh back. He’s been that way since he was a youngun’. I reckon he took after his Grandpa on his daddy’s side. Now there was a mean man. Sure he took care of his womenfolk, if you call not drinking, not swearin’, not chasing around taking good care, but he was never one to abide anyone just a’sittin’. No matter if you’d just hoe’d corn all morning and needed a rest, he expected you to keep moving. And he’d tell you about it, too. Woman, he’d say, get in there and get us some dinner. You best not be slouching around here, not when I’m hungry. Like I said, that man was mean.




But back to Billy. He’d got freshened up and put on his church clothes to go to old Miss Olive’s funeral. But he’d put his work hat on, and his work shoes, and that red bandana in his shirt pocket, and if he didn’t look a sight, I don’t know what does. But I didn’t laugh, least not out loud, else I’d be hearing it from Billy all the way to the funeral home. I just volunteered to polish up his church shoes for him, and to iron him a hanky. He said OK, I though you could take the hint. But then I didn’t know what to do about the hat. He didn’t have but two hats, his work hat and a wool Stetson that he wore to church in the winter time. In the summer he just went bare-headed. But somehow he seemed to think a hat was required at Miss Olive’s service, and that wool hat would sweat him to death in this heat.

Shopping list

Peggy's prompt--Shopping list




I remember my mother giving me a shopping list and sending me one block down the sidewalk from our house to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. to pick up a few things. It was usually just to pick up a few things that we used a lot of—bread, eggs, oleo (margarine to most of you), and sometimes vanilla wafers. I’d beg to get Cokes also, and she’d remind me that I would have to carry them all the way home. To get a Coke (one 6-oz in a heavy green bottle) I was willing to carry a 6-pack carton in one hand and the other groceries in a sack in the other arm. The sack wasn’t heavy, and the Cokes weren’t either, for about the first half block. During the rest of the block I stopped every five feet, placed the Coke carton on the ground, switched arms with the grocery sack (being very careful not to jiggle the eggs—Mama checked them as soon as I got home), and lifted the Coke carton by its narrow metal handle to the other hand. By the time I got home I had ridges in both palms, was sweaty and thirsty, and dying for that Coke. Mama would put three or four big ice cubes in an iced tea glass, pour half the six ounce Coke into it, hand it to me, and drink the rest out of the bottle herself. Yeah, times were tough back in the day, when three ounces of Coke was considered a treat worth suffering for.



But the experience did teach me the value of a list. Because if you came home without something Mama wanted, back you went to the store for the item you forgot. I got really good at checking the list. Maybe twice.



And I’ve been a lister ever since. I started with Christmas wish lists, gleaned from a thorough perusal of the Sears and Roebuck Christmas Catalog, which in those days arrived right after Halloween. (Not the day after Labor Day.) And graduated to lists for school—homework assignments, mostly. By high school it was more like a calendar of school deadlines—test on Friday in Trigonometry, paper due in English on Monday, last day of school next Friday, you remember, right?



By college I had diversified my lists. I had the school lists—assignments, tests, papers due. I had my personal lists—buy Tampax, look for used book for Embryology, write letter home, iron, birthday card for Sherry, REMEMBER LAUNDRY!



Sometime during the many years of college and graduate school, I graduated to TO DO lists—combining most to-do’s into one long list, with maybe the groceries separated on the sheet. I began to really like the feeling of slashing a big fat line through an item on the list that actually got done. When the items on the list were mostly all crossed out, I’d start another list, and transfer the not-done items to the top of the new list. Sometimes the same nagging to-do would appear at the top of the list for weeks, or maybe months. Get the oil changed in the car. Make a budget. Write down ideas for dissertation topics. Get haircut. Those really felt good when they got crossed off.



After I finished the PhD and went to work at FAMU’s Laboratory School as a “research coordinator”, I quickly discovered that there was no way to keep everything on one list. So I had one list of major projects, and then each project had a list. These lists stayed at work. My home lists went back to being just personal things, groceries, household tasks, birthday gifts and such. I kept a separate calendar for events—party on Saturday, meeting with so-and-so next Wednesday, Daddy’s birthday, Mama’s birthday, etc. This was getting complicated, but I had to admit it was easier that trying to keep all those things in my memory.



By the time I became an Assistant Dean, and had a pocket paper calendar, a calendar on my computer, a secretary who kept up with my scheduled meetings, a daily TO-DO list, sticky notes everywhere—all around the edge of my computer, the edges of my desk—I sometimes walked across campus with two or three of these sticky notes in my hand so I wouldn’t forget to stop by the Dean’s office, or the library, or the bookstore. For a long time I resisted a beeper, insisting that I could manage just fine without one, but after the Dean called to speak to me and my admin asst didn’t know where I was, not being able to decipher my sticky notes and TO-DO lists and computer scheduler, I was persuaded to carry a beeper.



Now I’m retired. I keep a grocery list going on the door of the refrigerator. I have a couple of to-do lists that I run into every once in a while and add to or mark off. I have a paper pocket calendar that I keep appointments in. And a few sticky notes. I’m weaning myself back to less list-y times. Unfortunately, as I get older, the need for lists and other reminders grows as my memory recedes. I try, though, to use other kinds of reminders instead of lists to help me remember to do things. Like putting my morning pills in the path I have to take to the bathroom. Like putting the laundry basket fill of clothes in full view outside the washer. Like putting my to-do list on the edge of the made-up bed where I’ll pass by it a million times a day. Like putting the bills to pay online stacked up in front of the computer. And I still forget things. I look right at the laundry basket and don’t notice it. I type away at the computer, never seeing the bills in front of me. I accidentally kick the morning pills out of the way and then wonder why there’s a full glass of water just sitting there by itself.



But somehow I get by, only occasionally forgetting something really important, like an appointment to meet someone. Just think what my life would be like if I went completely list-free. I’d never do anything. Out of sight, out of mind.