Yesterday was my sixty-fifth birthday.
While I do not feel particularly old today, by all governmental metrics, I am now a senior citizen. I am eligible for discounts on the Long Island Railroad, movie theaters, museums, amusement parks and a bunch of diners, if I feel like showing up to have dinner before six o'clock. Then again, why wouldn't I want to have dinner before six, when I am likely to fall asleep right afterwards?
As for the things I would really like, there are no senior discounts, like airline tickets, the good seats at ballgames and driving into Manhattan without paying tolls.
My family and friends have taken great joy in telling me how old I now am. The exception is my wife, who tells me my age at this time does not matter because I was old when we first met.
I was nineteen at the time.
Turning sixty-five does have its benefits. Well, at least "benefits" that include being eligible for Medicare, which means that I go from a health insurance policy that was about as good as it gets to a steaming morass of something that a Nobel laureate would have trouble understanding. I am sure the benefits administrator at the school district my wife taught at where our insurance originates must wake up each morning by now, shaking with fear of the thought that I will contact her with yet another question about our coverage. You would think that those in charge would want to make sure the average senior could understand coverage rules and procedures under Medicare; however, as an Ivy League graduate, I am as much in the dark about this stuff as I am about theoretical physics.
Then again, I think I can actually figure out black holes and that sort of thing. Black holes are where claims under Medicare go to die.
I was in Wyoming when I originally applied for Medicare. I was told the process would take about three or four weeks. Eight weeks later, I went to the local social security office to see what was holding things up, and was told the office in Jamaica, where my application was referred to had received it, but... well that was all they could tell me. I was given a direct phone number for somebody in the Jamaica office, who acknowledged they had received the application weeks ago ad done nothing with it. She then took a bit under ten minutes on the phone with me to review and approve the application. One wonders what would have happened if I had not gone to the Cody, Wyoming office to find out what was happening.
Or maybe black holes are something invented by the post office for those trying to figure out Medicare. As noted above, we were in Wyoming when I originally applied for Medicare. After the application was finally approved, our time was running short before returning to New York. I placed a hold on all mail, figuring that my supplemental Medicare card and information would be waiting for me when we got back to our Long Island home. In the mean time, mail kept arriving in Wyoming. I went on line and placed another hold on the mail, which kept arriving anyway. When we arrived in New York, I went to the post office to pick up the held mail, and was handed about a month's worth of junk mail. The rest of it, the real mail, had been forwarded to Wyoming, where it apparently still sits, including various bills, my supplemental Medicare card, handbook and instructions.
A friend went to the mailbox in Wyoming last week and told us it was stuffed. She says she mailed us the stuff that was not junk mail. We expect to receive it some time before the next Millennium. Either that, or I will show up at the post office next week and find out they just discovered the hold order on the mail, and are now storing it up for me even though the order has expired.
At least I still have my health, or at least I better until the forwarded mail arrives.
I still have my family, including my wife, who if I was old at nineteen, must think I am on the edge of fossilization by now, and my sons, who must think the same. At least my granddaughter has yet to make fun of me. Then again, she is only eighteen months old and refers to the family cats as "Mama".
That said, I am lucky. There has been little heavy lifting thus far in my life. I am told they save that for the time you get a hernia lifting paper plates in the buffet line at the company picnic. I have a wife whom I absolutely adore even if she thinks I may be Methuselah. I still have Mom, who still is as sharp as ever, and may be the one person left who believes I am young enough to carry out the garbage. I have my sons, my daughter in law and my precious grandchild. I have most of my wits still about me and the ability to travel and enjoy life with friends. Life has been good to me.
So fit me for a hearing aid -- if my Medicare supplement ever arrives -- and bring on the blue plate special. I have always liked meat loaf anyway.
