95 and Not Dead Yet: Growing Old Restlessly

by Reg Green (December 2024)

I’d always imagined that when I got really old, seventy say, life’s daily round would have been so simplified by all the labor-saving devices coming on the market, that  I would spend my days reading romance novels and watching black-and-white movies. Instead, I find that I spend almost every waking hour patting my pockets and opening backpacks to make sure that 1) I have every labor-saving device with me to survive and 2) that I’ve not forgotten to turn off all the others that might set the house on fire.

I’m grateful to George Plimpton, long-time editor of Paris Review for a story of his that I read recently of how, without conscious effort, he caused such confusion at his boarding school by his disorderly habits that, one day, when the campus was paralyzed by a mysterious shriek that penetrated every crevice, the headmaster instinctively exclaimed, “What’s Plimpton done now?”

Just so. I’m sure that if ever I yell a warning to my family that the mother of all earthquakes is heading our way in Southern California, they will carry on with their routine calmed by the thought, “What’s he lost now?”

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