Milestones

There are milestones in your life when you realize you've stopped heading uphill and have, in fact, started that long slide down. That first grey hair. The first time you replace a forgotten noun with "thingamajig." The first time you watch an awards program on TV and have no idea who any of the participants are.

The first time you need help to get a jar open.

That's one of Raoul's best attributes, which shows you where we stand. He can open any jar with no effort at all. Olive jars, apple sauce jars, even the tightest relish jar is putty in his hands.

I haven't gotten to the point yet where I have to ask for his help. Instead I just flail around until he intervenes. I roll around the floor, trying to get a grip, run it under hot water, thwack it against the ground like Barry Bonds hitting a fastball, but it's no use. Raoul swaggers up confidently and grabs the jar out of my hand. He grips the lid firmly and three seconds later I've got a pickle in my mouth.

Obviously since this is age-related it's only going to get worse. Eventually I'm going to be that old person who sits in the doctor's waiting room and spends fifteen minutes trying to move my magazine to the perfect distance away from my face, who needs a ramp or a Jamaican nursemaid to get me on a bus.

But for now I'm the wimp who can't get stuff out of jars. I'm tempted to get one of those adjustable jar-openers, but it'd just replace one humiliation with another. And prompt another aging milestone: the day I get on Lillian Vernon's mailing list.

Even though I'm dreading this, the start of the slow decline to oblivion, I appreciate the irony.

I spent the first half of my life trying to put something in something else, and I'm going to spend the second half trying to get something out.