Tales From the Inside

I used to live down the street from Edison Middle School. Every spring the EMS band marched in the local Memorial Day Parade. They practiced their song indoors all year, but at some point during March or April, the Edison Middle School Marching Panthers would take to the street.

The grade spread was, still is I think, six through eight. I estimate this to span ages eleven through thirteen. At that age, on the border of puberty, those marching bodies didn’t appear to be of the same species. 

There were of course differences in height and girth. But from the perspective of my living room window, their bodies appeared to be put together in wholly different ways, of only similar parts. Some were still children, compact and tightly hinged. Others were mostly torso; still others, mostly arms and legs. Their hands and feet operated like semaphores. 

I could pick out 8th grade girls. They were smallish adults having grown into maturity over that mysterious summer between the 7th and 8th grades. But the others, the boys and the younger girls looked like they’d been assembled out of parts from a can of Tinker Toys, and not all from the same can.

Maybe not even all Tinker Toys.

What I didn’t realize then was that this oddball assemblage of disparate parts would reappear. 

From the end of puberty through young adulthood, householder years, middle age, we humans all look fairly similar. We differ in height, weight, even limb length and laugh lines, but proportionately, we’re pretty much the same. 

Then somewhere, maybe as early as age 60 for some of us, we start to disassemble. Our torsos thicken, our shoulders round, our heads go forward, we lose muscle in our legs and plumpness under the skin of our arms, hands and faces. Our fingers stiffen and curl. Our limbs are supplemented by canes, walkers, scooters and wheelchairs.

We look like old middle schoolers. The Edison Middle School Marching Elders.

And like middle schoolers, we’re treated as one-size-fits-all. 

Plenty of advice is being written about aging. How to stay young, look young, think young, feel young. How to care for your aging parents. How to deal with your aging body. What drugs to take. How to grieve the loss of your spouse and your friends, over and over. All good, I’m sure. But all one-size-fits-all.

What we need are stories from the inside. Whaddya say? Let’s write our own. Let’s be the heroes in our own narratives.