Aging Gratefully

Among the many impacts that COVID-19 has had on our society there is one unexpected one for me.  These days, I am proudly announcing my age as my passport to getting vaccines that will keep me healthy and alive.

It’s been a long time since I proudly proclaimed my age publicly, because ageism is real, my friends.  I never wanted to have my experience minimized because I’ve lived this long.  Strangely enough, I want to live even longer than I already have. 

You remember those age-related milestones that we were happy to acknowledge:

“I’m 16!  I can get my driver’s license!”  This was purely hypothetical for me, as the local driver’s ed class would interfere with my waitress job at Winky’s Drive-In Restaurant and my family had this rigid work ethic thing going on.  I knew that even if I got my driver’s license, my parents would never let me drive their car, and I could get literally anywhere I needed to go without one.  When I was about ready to graduate college, I got my license.

“I’m 18! I can vote!” This was an interesting process for me because I was a student at Clarion State College at the time.  Because I fancied myself a bit of a maverick and independent thinker, I wanted to register as an Independent, and not affiliate with either of the major political parties. The registrar in Clarion had never heard of such a thing, I could not convince him that this was a “thing,” and he simply didn’t know how to do it. Honestly, the universe really didn’t want me to be a maverick just like it didn’t want me to be a hippie, so I relented and registered as a Democrat. 

“I’m 21!  I can drink legally!”  I remember this one fondly, because I turned 21 at 12:10 a.m. on a Saturday (Friday evening), and the student apartments at Clarion where I lived were handily adjacent to a bar.  Some friends and I marched over there, and I had my first legal drink the second I turned 21.  That was fun.  I was a Junior in college on that fateful day, so we won’t talk about the illegal drinks I had before then.

And now we skip, just a few years ahead, to the latest one:

“I’m 65! I can get the COVID vaccine/booster shot!”

Even before all this COVID mess, and despite my general aversion to needles, I was always a staunch supporter of vaccines. You mean that by having a shot, I can prevent a disease that at the very least will make me miserable and at its worst may kill me?  Sign me up! I had vaccines when I was a kid, my child had them, and I grew up to take whatever preventive shot they would allow me to take. 

So, you had better believe that during the horror show that was 2020, I was more than eager to sign up for my COVID vaccine just as soon as it was available. I turned 65 in March of 2021 but was able to get the shot in February because (and I’m not bragging) I had a few other risk factors that suggested that if I did contract the virus, the outcome might not be so good.

Of course, it wasn't too long before any adult in this country who wants one (with a few exceptions) could get the vaccine, but I was happy to get it early. I breathed an especially heavy sigh of relief when my loved ones and I received the original vaccine, and my sigh was even more heartfelt when I received my booster shot two days after they became available to people 65 and older.

I can’t help but to be grateful to have reached the age of 65, alive and well enough to enjoy my life with prospects of living to be even older due in part to the vaccinations. I suppose I subscribe to my father’s philosophy.  He once told me, in his late 80’s, “The thing is I’m just not ready to go yet. There’s always something to look forward to.”