Seeing the Humor in the Cycle of Life

Early in December, I had a routine physical checkup. For the first time in decades, the nurse decided to check my height. I said, "No need - I'm 5'2"". She looked at the thingie and said, "Nope, you're just a little over 5 feet." I repeated what I knew to be my height. She repeated what the measurements said. Ok - I guess I've shrunk, as most of us do in our later years.

I'm not one of those folks who, when all else is reasonably normal, runs to a pill. I've shrunk. I've also been blessed with knowing and living with several generations of people when I was growing up. To me, this was a fact of growing older. No big deal.

I happened to mention my shrinkage to a checkout clerk at a grocery store later that morning. She said she was already so short (she was in her 20s) that she figured she'd disappear by the time she became a senior citizen. I remarked that it seemed that only women shrank; she said it seemed men got taller. I didn't have the heart to tell her that men only appear taller because we get shorter.

Jump to this past week. I was sharing this shrinkage thing with a male friend of mine, a former neighbor. I was still amazed that I hadn't noticed the loss in height. I told him what the gal said about men not shrinking.

To my surprise, he shared this. He is 70 (I'm 73), and was 5'11" all his life, with a 32" sleeve length. He is now 5'8" with a 34" sleeve length. Neither of us can account for the additional 2" in arm length, unless he is wearing his shirts a little looser for some reason.

Also, he said he was 206 when he left the military and was a 28 waist. He is still 206 but with a 42 waist - I attribute that to gravity and the fact that when he shrunk, gravity forced/compressed and squeezed his waist outward.

We both had a good laugh at life and at its inevitable cycles.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the sense of humor you bestowed on us, that we can take life's changes with a grain of sale and a giggle or two.