The Misanthrope's Corner - effects of aging - Brief Article - Column

Thank you for the birthday gifts, including the four low-tech alarm clocks, one of which, as my vigilant post office noted, arrived ticking. We have given "white noise" new meaning and rewritten an old adage: "Be careful what you wish for; NR readers might send it to you."

The arrival of my 66th birthday finds me confronting a hard fact: I'm turning into an odd duck. There are some who would not regard this as a new development, but I refer to the psychological changes said to come with advancing age.

The most surprising change is that I no longer love to read the way I once did. I used to read one book after another-literally-finishing one and immediately starting a second, spending whole days reading books by the yard. Now I pick up a book, read a few pages, see right through the author, and toss it aside in disgust. All I feel like reading now are a few beloved books that I've read over and over, like Katherine, by Anya Seton.

I also cancelled all my subscriptions except the Washington Post and NR. Most columns and op-eds seem so predictable to me now; I can read the first paragraph and know exactly where it's going, so why pay for that? I've been gleefully adding up my refunds like a miser-something I've never been, in my free-spending, big-tipping life. Chalk up another change.

The subscription I resented the most was that rock quarry of the printed word, the Sunday New York Times. I wasn't reading anything in it except Maureen Dowd, who is an "uneven" writer (good when she's good; "off" the rest of the time). I kept remembering the old Peter Arno cartoon of an exhausted dog, feet splayed, tongue hanging out, clearly moribund, being examined by a vet. The caption reads: "I see he's been retrieving the Sunday New York Times." I felt like the dog.

I kept telling myself that I needed to subscribe "for professional reasons," but finally admitted that the only thing I enjoyed was the acrostic in the magazine. I tried to subscribe to the magazine only, but was told you can't: They know in their hearts that the puzzle page is all most people want, so to keep from going bankrupt they make you subscribe to the whole paper.

Spending $200 a year on a puzzle was ridiculous, so I cancelled, deciding to xerox the acrostic at the public library. Trouble was, somebody had torn the puzzle page out of the magazine before I got to it. (See what I mean? Nobody in his right mind would steal the op-ed page.) When the librarian saw it, she volunteered to call another branch to see if they had an intact magazine, and have them fax the page to me. They did, and in minutes I had my acrostic.

I tell this story for a reason: to analyze the rush of gratitude-yea, worship-that came over me. It wasn't about getting the acrostic, it was the librarian's attitude. True, it is undeniably heartening in present- day America to find efficiency and promptness amid the purple mountains of human error that dot the fruitcake plain, but that doesn't quite explain it. The fact is, my uncharacteristically plaintive reaction was that of an old person: Someone had very kindly gone out of her way to help me.

Psychologists call this a "breakthrough," others call it an "epiphany." Whatever it's called, I had another one a few days later while cutting my toenails. It's been hard to do lately because my joints are stiff and it hurts to bend my legs into the necessary position, but this time I suffered the added pain of regret.

When I was in college, my grandmother was only a little older than I am now; it must have hurt her to cut her toenails too. Why, instead of running around with boys, didn't I go over to the house and cut her toenails for her? It would have been such a simple favor, but I didn't do it. It never even crossed my mind because I could twist my supple young legs into any position (the '55 T-Bird was a veritable workout salon) and assumed everyone else could too. My sins of commission never weighed on me and still don't, but that one small sin of omission will be on my conscience for the rest of my life.

My new aversion to reading is matched by a literal aversion that has come over my palate: I've lost my taste for booze. I mixed a martini on Christmas but couldn't get it down. I'm now into wine, which I never liked before. Go figure. My physical reaction may have to do with aging, but what interests me more is my new psychological oddity.

I'm saving the corks from my wine bottles. I don't know why, except that cork is expensive, and Marcel Proust lined his walls with it to keep out noise while he wrote. I found myself thinking that when I save enough of them, I can make myself a life preserver. Why I should want a life preserver I can't say, since I don't go near the water. But it just seems a shame to throw away all those perfectly good corks, so I save them in an old duffel bag. I can't wait to see what it will look like when it's full. Go figure.

I have none of the conventional symptoms of geriatric depression, though I did feel sad when Rachel Gurney died. She played Lady Marjorie in Upstairs, Downstairs, and was my favorite British actress next to Judi Dench. I don't have any American favorites; they all look alike, sound alike, and expose what I could swear is the same bosom.