Old Bags R Us

I have a friend called Kira, who is always trying to look on the bright side regarding her health, despite the fact that she is getting on a bit.

She tells me things like, "I'm so pleased I still have 20/20 vision, because did you know your eyes start to go at forty?"

And: "My back is still in good condition, even though my parents started getting back problems in their thirties."

She also often says, "I really need an afternoon nap." Sometimes she even takes one.

I tell her that her gratefulness that her hair has not yet turned white, that she still has her own teeth and that she can still walk without a Zimmerframe (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit here), is misplaced. After all, she is only thirty-six. Maybe it is because I come from a long line of healthy people, but I thought it was common knowledge that, apart from players of American football who sustain terrible injuries, heroin addicts who share needles, people who work in asbestos factories and street walkers, most people do not get any major malfunctionings of their organs or skeletons until their sixties? Am I right?

Anyway, maybe Kira's rubbing off on me, because after taking the kids to the zoo for five hours with her and her son yesterday, I was so zonked that I took a nap with my younger daughter, Sausage. My husband came back from work early and was pissed off that I was napping at three pm.

To which I replied, "Well, you try walking about a boiling hot zoo for five hours, inhaling eye watering gusts of chimpanzee urine, and see how refreshed you feel!"

I feel I was entitled to that nap, he doesn't. What does he know? He's only twenty-eight, for crying out loud. See what he feels like in another eight years.