As some of you might have guessed from my weekly rants, I am a person of age. I would say that I am old, but that is not politically correct. I am a person of years? I'll buy that.
Because I am in that category, I have undergone various forms of surgery, X-rays, MRIs, blood tests and somber conversations with medical specialists who warn that if I don't follow their advice, I could drop dead at any time. One remarked, in the peculiar vernacular of the street, "You'll be toast." I'm not sure whether he was advising or threatening me.
Furthermore, I am to take, without question or hesitation, the prescriptions they recommend, the containers for which I have lined up on my desk like obedient little soldiers. I could reel off their names, but I don't care to reveal specifics concerning my generally woeful condition.
I am, to tell the truth, glued together like an old chair.
I dislike taking pills and am quick to find reasons for not taking them. I study their attached warnings carefully, noting, for instance, that with some I am to avoid grapefruit products and prolonged periods of sunlight, and I am never, I mean never, to open, chew or crush the capsules.
I don't care much for grapefruit and have no problem staying out of the sun, despite family requests to spend otherwise pleasant weekend days lying on the sand like a beached whale, going blind from the sun's relentless glare.
But what really captures my attention are cautionary notations that some pills may cause dizziness or blurred vision, and I am to use caution while operating machinery or heavy equipment.
When I mentioned this to my wife, the sly Cinelli, she said, "I wouldn't worry about it. I don't see you using a pile driver or operating a thresher."
"That's not the point. Why just machinery or heavy equipment?"
"What do you want them to say?"
"Well, why not, for instance, use caution while climbing mountains. That could be dangerous too. Get dizzy, slip on the ice and down you tumble head-over-behind to a snowy death."
"You're worried about that? You who won't climb a stepladder to change a light globe? I doubt that you'll be clawing your way up the south face of Everest any time soon."
"You forget how close I came to scaling K-2 in 1964. Had I made the attempt and had I been taking any one of my current drugs, God knows how tragically the effort might have ended."
