Old Age Has Finally Caught Up With Me

by Armando Simón (December 2025)

Old age for me is like being on death row albeit without having to spend time in a cell. —Taki

I recently came to the sad realization that I am getting old, contrary to my strenuous efforts to avoid it. This revelation came when I absolutely had to have a total knee replacement. This may sound odd when you consider the fact that people in their 20s and 30s do get knee replacements, usually for doing those sports that put a strain on the knees.

I would like to say that this was necessitated by my playing racquetball or ziplining.

Not me. I was just walking.

The meniscus just ripped. The pain was excruciating! Over the following months, I took pain medication, which initially reduced it and I did physical therapy. But then, advanced arthritis set in, the reduced pain increased, mobility became even more impaired, and a knee replacement was the only solution.

Other than amputation.

Let me digress for a second. If you are ever told that a knee replacement is absolutely necessary, under no circumstances look at videos that show how it is done, Not even animated versions. I did not know the meaning of “gruesome” until I saw one, long after the operation, and if I had seen it before, I think they would have had to drag me screaming into the OR.

Nonetheless, the surgery went fine, with a very good surgeon, the kind of surgeon that if he had flunked out of medical school would have made an excellent butcher.

Recovery was unusually long for me. Throughout, my family was very supporting, with my 21 y/o son even curtailing his late-stage teenage criticism.

There were days when I was angry that I was a burden to them; I felt that it was my job to take care of them, not the other way around. But I have to admit that there were other days when I basked in being a “cripple,” because of being spoiled. I even got a temporary handicapped sticker and was able to park in the handicap spaces I had previously denounced as being too many.

Five months after the surgery I am still in physical therapy. At first, the physical therapy went well (and I have developed a lot of respect for physical therapists), but then stagnated. Only in the last three weeks has there been a remarkable improvement through the use of “scraping.” Scraping is not often used, I was told, and only a few therapists are qualified. Scraping is exactly what it sounds like. A smooth substance is spread over the skin above the muscles and a flat (not sharp) metal edge is rubbed up and down, gently at first, then forcefully. It hurts a lot and it helps a lot. Evidently, the reason I was still having pain and impaired mobility is that there are “knots” within the muscles that needed to be smoothed out.

Anyway, this was the last straw to convince me that I was getting old.

I am 74.

Now, before you start snickering or sneering, let me explain.

I belong to the generation which had the saying, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” It was an article of genuine belief for the generation that grew up in the Sixties and Seventies, the time when the idea was put forth through various means that young people were idealistic and pure and wise before their time and, as such, were easily manipulated and brainwashed by leftist sophists.

Young people can always be easily manipulated to do stupid things while thinking themselves very wise and rebellious.

Some of them decided they would never grow old (shades of Peter Pan!).

Then, we hit the 30 threshold and our views changed.

Unlike others who were young like me, I listened to advice from others, old and young. I avoided cigarettes. I avoided drugs. I delayed marriage for as long as I could. I learned that prolonged exposure to sunlight was detrimental to the skin and aged people fast, so my beach excursions were not a daily, but once a month routine in Florida and Mississippi. Plastic items left in the summers became faded and brittle after two summers.

I was vain, as vain as any woman (I don’t take selfies, though).

And with good reason. I dated a lot of girls. And I received special treatment in various places and by various people simply because of the way I looked. I can say this without sounding like empty bragging because I admit that, compared to the way I looked then, I now look like road kill.

A couple of months back, I went to the DMV to get my license renewed and brought in my naturalization certificate as proof of citizenship, which had my picture in my late twenties. The woman looked at it, then looked up at me, wide-eye and blurted out, “That was you??”

Yet, in my forties, fifties, and even sixties, I still looked good. True, I no longer had a lion’s mane on my head, but I was very, very far from being bald. And yes, I had grey hair that I colored, but I started getting grey when I was in my twenties, much to my mother’s alarm, so coloring my hair has meant nothing, age-wise. And yes, I have shrunk from being six feet tall to 5’11 ½  to 5’11 to presently 5’10. But, right up through my entire sixties and recently, I had no wrinkles. I was tall. Strong. Healthy (with the exception of a couple of transitory episodes).

Think I’m exaggerating? I was 47 when I got married to my present wife, when she was 20.

And several other girls flirted with me after marriage (I declined).

Throughout these past few decades, people remarked I looked twenty to twenty-five years younger. And I have to confess to schadenfreude when I saw other men my age, or even ten, twenty years younger than I who were a total wreck. In fact, last week, I saw a man my age with a cane, shuffling, bent over at a ninety-degree angle!

As the old saying goes: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”

Or genes.

But now, I have to come to grips that the inevitable has come.

Well, sort of. From time to time I think that there is something wrong with the mirror.

I need to get one that works.

Mind you, I always knew old age would come. But sometime in the future. Far, far in the future.

I just wanted to delay it as long as possible.

But just recently, I made a truly horrible discovery.

My arms are barely beginning to develop a couple of wrinkles. Wrinkles!

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Armando Simón is a retired psychologist and historian, author of The U.

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