Birds, Biddies & The Bygone Years
I’m proud to tell people I work in the older adult industry. There’s always a pause. Most assume I mean the adult industry—which is something else entirely!
In truth, I work with older adults who are moving into assisted living communities. My clients are of a certain age, so today’s tech lingo doesn’t really come up in our conversations. For example, “tick-tock” still describes the sound of a grandfather clock, while a “tweet” comes from a bird’s beak, and not some nonsense being spewed on social media.
Speaking of birds, they play a significant role in the aging process. Popular phrases like “old crow” and “no spring chicken” are often used to describe the people we will inevitably become. That is if we’re fortunate, since aging sure beats the alternative! My dad proudly announces this fact every year before blowing out his birthday candles. He’s one of those wise old owl. I don’t know if owls gain intellect with age, but we seem to believe they’re super damn smart! At the least, it’s one of the few positive bird-to-elder epithets!
Another popular avian-to-older-adult phrase is the tough-old-bird. He’s the guy with the audacity to climb ladders despite being past a certain age. Some say this behavior is akin to acting like a loon. I guess this means the loon species lead wild lives, and when we’re old, people might say you’re as crazy as one!
When you think about it, the early bird who gets the worm clearly explains why older gentlemen make for great fishermen. After all, rising before dawn is the best time to dig for bait. Never mind the fact that early rising is simply due to an aging man’s circadian clock going out of whack. So, waking before sunrise isn’t really about gathering invertebrates, it’s about having insomnia!
Men aren’t the only ones to take a beating in the aging-to-aviary correlation. Consider the bird-to-beauty industry. Crow’s feet and turkey waddles don’t just show up one day. They take their damn time. So, when they appear to arrive like a flock of seagulls, we feel like a birdbrain for not noticing sooner. Sure, there’s always plastic surgery, exercising, and consuming better diets to stop the clock from ticking forward. It seems we immortals are willing to try anything to keep our face from migrating south!
I’ve often heard that birds of a feather like to flock together. This is certainly evident in the land of assisted living communities, the place where society says we should house our elders. Then, we fill the sunset years with Bingo and bird watching. With this reality facing our future, is there even a need to ask why the caged bird sings? This is depressing, so I’m going to take a break and read an issue of Audubon, which I’ll admit, I actually enjoy. I suppose this means I too have reached the age when birds somehow catch my eye, as if they never existed before. Even the bland-colored ones in the backyard seem more interesting than they did yesterday.
I suppose it’s fair to say that the entire aging process is for the birds. I just pray that when my time comes, I don’t go down as being labeled bat-$hit crazy. On second thought, that sounds less depressing and might even be a little fun! Besides, bats aren’t even birds, they’re mammals. You can chew on that piece of needless knowledge—potentially a Jeopardy question you’ll now know how to answer! A little bird told me that having brains is better than eating crow among some geriatric ganders, before flying this proverbial coop.
Photo Credit: To the person with master-level Photoshop skills, I appreciate your talent enough to use your knitting bird photo as the visual for this blog post. I have no clue who you are, so the best way to give credit is to let folks know it’s from a website called Bouncy Mustard. https://bouncymustard.com/25-hilarious-photos-of-birds-with-arms-that-will-make-you-lol/