The Kids are Alright

I’m happy to go along pretending I’m not a “senior” in my own mind, but sometimes that mental image is psychically shattered by reality. I recently passed the one-year anniversary of retiring and am apparently still alive and kicking. I say kicking, but it’s more like limping along. While my brain continues to deny all things aging, my knee joints unfailingly remind me that there are, in fact, limits to my physical prowess.

I admit I’ve managed to ignore knee-related issues until lately. The knees were doing their proper knee-ly job, and I assumed that practice would continue indefinitely. However, those pernicious joints have elected to bend in ways that are not conducive to one remaining in an upright stance, or doing anything that requires the knees to bend in the manner for which they were designed.

I had to go to the doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, to see what could be done to make the knees work as intended. Let me just say here that when it comes to healthcare professionals, age actually is more than a number, especially when that number is the difference in age between myself and the medical professional in front of me. Like, a fifty-year difference.

The trouble with seniors is that we know we’ve accumulated a significant amount of life experience. When we encounter someone who appears to be incredibly younger than ourselves, yet who is in an authoritative position as regards ourselves, we can tend to experience just the slightest of doubts. I can be understood for thinking that all my medical providers appear to be approximately twelve years old.

I’m an adult, and I can suspend my disbelief when I have to. I can assume that the medical professional in front of me has indeed gone to med school and has the appropriate degrees, which implies that they obtained certain applicable medical knowledge. I’m all for people knowing the latest in their professional field. The experience is another question entirely. After my visit with the ortho surgeon was concluded and he asked if I had any questions, I couldn’t help myself. I asked him, jokingly but not really, to confirm a couple of things:

“You’re all grown up now and you have experience with this?”

He took it pretty well and laughed, then assured me that he’s definitely got the necessary experience to do the job.

So apparently twelve-year-olds are amazing these days.