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They say you should write about what you know, and since I am now well into my seventies, I think I know a little something about aging. Actually, I am vaguely amused by what is happening to me, as are my friends. We joke about it all the time. Of course, like many things we joke about, it’s not all that funny. But humor is a great way to cope with almost any of life’s difficulties, and, in fact, it turns out that coping humor can indeed help older people feel better about their ability to manage health issues (Marziali, McDonald, and Donahue, 2008). So in line with this, I want to take a humorous look at some aspects of the aging process.
As a longtime music fan, I’m going to do this by imagining some little revisions in the lyrics of several classic popular songs so that they would now capture what happens in the aging process. And since people of all ages enjoy pop songs, maybe these lyrics will help middle-agers to appreciate what life is like for their aging parents. For example, a hit song from the early ’60s is “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” We old folks know that for us it should be “Getting Up Is Hard to Do.” In fact, the songwriter Neil Sedaka, now 79, is probably well aware of this himself.
I remember having a workout session with a very young personal trainer about five years ago. One exercise involved me sitting on the floor. “Take your time sitting down,” he said, trying to be sensitive about my aging body.
I don’t remember if I said this, but my thought was, “Clearly, you don’t know much about old people. Getting down isn’t the problem; it’s the getting back up we struggle with.”
Then there is Paul McCartney’s wonderful “When I’m 64,” which he apparently wrote for his father when he was around 24. If Sir Paul, who is now 75, were to write it today, it would probably be “When I’m 84,” and the opening line wouldn’t be “When I get older, losing my hair,” but rather “When I get older, losing it all.”
And how about Dean Martin’s great mid-’50s hit, “Memories Are Made of This.” For me today it would be “Memories Are Made of What?”
But back to the Beatles and Paul McCartney. Another of his great songs, “I’ve Just Seen a Face” would now be “I’ve Just Seen the Ground,” with the chorus, “Falling, yes, I’m falling/ Hope someone’s calling 9-1-1.”
And what about “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which Bob Dylan wrote when he was about 23? If Bob (now 76) were to be writing it today, it would probably go like this: “Hey, Dr. Tambolofsky, write a ’scrip for me/I’m not sleepy and I need something to help me sleep, Hey, Dr. Tambolofsky, write a ’scrip for me/In the jingle-jangle morning/I will call your office.”
Then there’s “Walk Right In,” a folk-blues song, which was a big hit for The Rooftop Singers in 1963. They were in their 30s when their revival of this 1929 song by Gus Cannon hit the charts, but were they playing it today, the lyrics would probably continue on from “Walk right in, sit right down/Daddy, let your mind roll on” to “Everybody’s talkin’ ’bout a new kind of walker…”
And the late great Ray Charles might have sung slightly different lyrics for his 1959 classic “What’d I Say” if he’d recorded it as a much older guy. Instead of “See that girl with the red dress on/She can do the Birdland all night long,” it might be, “See that nurse with the white dress on/She’ll check your vitals all day long.”
But getting older doesn’t necessarily involve health crises. There are also the everyday problems that young people laugh at until they too face them one day. And perhaps Steve Winwood would be thinking of one of those common annoyances were he to have written “Can’t Find My Way Home” today, at age 69, rather than when he actually wrote it at around 20.
Back in 1969, his band Blind Faith sang, “But I’m near the end and I ain’t got the time/And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.” Today the song would be “Can’t Find My Glasses,” and the lyrics would be “But I’m in the kitchen, and I’ve checked in the bedroom/I want to read, but I can’t find my glasses.”
Actually, I don’t think any of these revisions would be very popular today, because our nation is obsessed with youthfulness. But once upon a time, it wasn’t; in fact, a very popular song in the late 19th century was titled "Silver Threads Among the Gold." Its opening lines were "Darling, I am growing old/Silver threads among the gold." Probably today it would be “Baby, I'll never get old/As long as hair dye and Botox is sold."
References
Marziali, E, McDonald, L, and Donahue, P. (2008). The role of coping humor in the physical and mental health of older adults. Aging and Mental Health, 18(4), 713-718.
