MAY 19, 2025 – In case my younger friends and family members require formal notice, I’m getting old . . . -er. That fact shouldn’t surprise anyone. What’s new about my growing old, however, is my now express albeit reluctant acknowledgment of this irreversible reality. Physical infirmity is too obvious to hide, especially from oneself. Mental infirmity, on the other hand, is far more susceptible to denialism if not obliviousness on the part of the person experiencing cognitive or more specifically to my case, attitudinal, decline.
Naturally, one notices attitudinal decline in others far more readily than one recognizes it in oneself. A more general version of this phenomenon occurs throughout our lives: we readily see other people’s deficiencies but are blind to our own. When it comes to aging, for example, I notice it far more in [for their protection and mine, names are withheld] than I do or can in myself.
Eventually, however, truth and reality catch up to a person. For example, once you realize that you’ve been ignoring red traffic lights for the past couple of months and for the third time in a week you’ve started down the wrong way on a freeway exit ramp—and miraculously, you’ve avoided an accident (if not blaring horns)—you begin to accept that your kids were right after all: It’s time to relinquish the keys to the car.
Of course, the foregoing “car keys” example is extreme, not only in practice but in theory. I mean, if by the grace of angels, you’ve avoided a T-bone or head-on collision despite exponentially increasing odds, and then, as if by divine revelation, you snap to attention with the alertness of a teenage champion video gamer, you’re probably exhibiting impossibly acute cognitive ability.
But my point remains: in most cases of aging, the old person is figuratively deaf and blind to the fact of growing old. This applies especially to “attitudinal decline.” This effect of aging is most manifest in the utterance of common prefatory or conclusory phrases such as: “Young people, these days. They have no clue.” Or “Back when I was in high school . . .” Or “Slow down. What’s your hurry?” Or, “Why did they have to go put that round-about in? Now you have to slow way down, when before you could drive straight through.” Or, “I can’t get the dang printer to print.” Or, “Social media! It’s all so wrong.”
I laugh at the foregoing signals of “attitudinal decline,” but I’m full on serious about my own core manifestation of old codgerism masquerading as a quirky pet peeve: most smartphone conversations.
Back in the good ol’ days, a phone conversation was as clear as a bell—as in Bell Telephone—because the phone was connected to a series of cables hanging quite visibly from a parade of creosoted poles marching into infinity. In the post-modern era—save our souls—we carry portable phones. Yes, we call them “phones,” but how many times have you been searching for some phone-based app when you think, Oooo! Got to call so-and-so. But wait! Where’s my phone? (Of course, that right there is another undeniable sign of aging.) Because the damn phone is on hand or on your person 24/7—here, there and everywhere—it’s as good as having a taskmaster and attention diverter implanted inside your already frazzled brain.
But that’s only the half of it. Personally, I can resist calls and texts indefinitely. I’m not one of Pavlov’s dogs. Wait. That’s not quite right. When Beth calls, I answer. What I can’t control, however, is transmission quality. Until I hit 70, I could ignore background noise, chatter, distractions. I didn’t like them, but I could muster the requisite attitude to ignore the flak. No longer.
Nearly 100% of Beth calls come through when she’s driving. Because her vehicle sound system is “old,” she sounds invariably like an air-traffic controller. The conversations typically sound like this:
[Distinctive Ring Tone]
ME: “Hello?”
BETH: [K-k-k-k-k] “Hello?” (with more “k-k-k-k” in the background)
ME: “Yes.
BETH: [K-k-k-k-k] “Hello? Eric? “K-k-k-k”
ME: “You sound like ATC.”
BETH: [After punching or pressing some button] “Hi. Is that better?”
ME: “Yeah.”
BETH: [Engine noise, traffic sounds in the background] “So . . . are you at home?”
ME: “Yes.”
BETH: “Can you go into my office and . . .” [“k-k-k-k-“]
ME: “Hello?”
BETH: “You’re cutting out. Can you not move?”
ME: “I’m sitting in a chair. You’re the one moving, I think.”
BETH: “Let me call you back . . .”
Every time we go through this, three thoughts course through my head. The first, is . . . “ME: “This is niner-five-hotel-seven-four approaching from the south five miles out. Over. ATC: CopyninerfivehohomfourdescendeighhundunintelligiblefeetrunwayL2over [k-k-k-k]. ME: Copy. Niner, five, seven, hotel, four, descend to–what was that?–I think eight hundred feet, final . . . runway L-2.” My second thought: I can hear it coming—BETH: “Maybe it’s time for a new car.” My third thought: Don’t complain about her calls from the car.
More problematic, however, are many other calls—social and business. All too often playing in the background is the clatter and chatter of a bar and restaurant intentionally designed to amplify all sound, thanks to a polished concrete floor, glass walls and metal ceiling and music pumped to the max, as well-oiled groups of patrons laugh uproariously. Calls from or to such venues, I hate. The next worst are calls from a mechanic’s garage while the caller is standing next to the guy operating a pneumatic wrench. A bad runner-up involves a caller who’s transacting business with someone in person, when you can’t tell who’s talking to whom until the caller says in a markedly clearer voice, “Sorry,” and accordingly, you think the “sorry” is directed at you, except it’s followed immediately by “Thanks,” which you know is directed at the other person, so you then realize the “sorry” wasn’t intended for you after all, but you hear “See, ya,” followed by another “sorry,” which you now know is for you. In the honorable mention class are the calls made in a slight breeze that sounds like a hurricane wind.
It’s on these occasions when I wish for the “good ol’ days” when you and the person on the other end of the phone were sitting in chairs, either at home or in an office, clear of noisy interference and all manners of distractions. Back then, it seems in retrospect, our minds were less frenetic; our thoughts, more cogent; our concentration more focused.
But then I catch myself. Are my nostalgic sentiments about land-line phone calls accurate? Or am I merely revealing more “attitudinal decline”?
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
