Thanks to a Friend, I Have Seen the Future, and I am Depressed

This is one of my best friends, whom I shall call "M," except her real name is much cuter (and longer) than that, and it sounds like "Madwoman," which I often call her.
Amongst M's personality traits is a devotion to truth and knowledge. In a practical everyday way, this dogged determination shows up in the form of helpful email links but also in the debunking of urban legends by her checking with Snopes to see what's what. So, for instance, if I get a message forwarded from someone which claims that sleeping with a fan blowing on you all night will kill you, I just wait a couple of seconds to see if a follow-up message from M appears with the text, "False. [Inserts Snopes link.]" And this pretty much happens daily. Because people are not going to be fooled under M's watch. It's a mission.

And if you say to her in a nonchalant way, "Gee. I wonder [fill in blank with something like "Has Rupert Everett had plastic surgery?"] she gets her phone and Googles whatever topic you just wondered about and tells you the answer. Because people are not going to be befuddled under M's watch. It's a mission. Because, you know, knowledge and truth, etc., etc.

Two quirky traits we share are that we count a lot [random things, like number of steps from here to there or how many seconds at a red light] and we each fear that we will be detained somewhere like a doctor's office waiting room or the airport without a useful endeavor to pass the time, like debunking people's emails or having a book to read. She likes Sudoku; I like crosswords. We both have Yorkies, except hers, Petey, pictured at left, is a gigantic Yorkie who backs up into you to give you his version of "the cold shoulder," but it's actually the cold backside.

So the other day, I received this graphic from M, sharing straightforward, albeit depressing info about aging. Why she forwarded this, I did not know, unless she was compelled to make sure we would not be under any false presumptions that aging might be ... bearable. Because people are not going to wear rose colored glasses under M's watch. It's a mission.

Read these stats, and then I'll tell you why it's depressing.


It's depressing because I don't know about you, but by these determinants, I'm already old, and I have apparently been old for many years! This is my life on a graph, people! I mean, all that's missing is "1 hour per day plucking chin hairs and looking for the rheumatiz' medicine."

So I have Madwoman to thank for this, who just had to make sure I was in the know about Expectations vs. Reality regarding growing old. Wouldn't want to be wearing rose-colored bifocals, that's for sure. Makes me want to give her the Petey back-up!

Does this graphic represent your life at this point?