From the Sunday TIMES and NEWS-STAR
Favorite
Old Guy Joke.
Three old guys are out walking.
First one says, “Windy, ain’t it?”
First one says, “Windy, ain’t it?”
Second
one says, “No, it’s Thursday.”
Third
one says, “So am I. Let’s go get a beer.”
Say
what?
I
love me an old dude.
They
are on my mind today more than usual because of a Townhall Spotlight report forwarded
to me citing a “landmark study that sounds like science fiction” in which “a
professor at Harvard Medical School regenerated the brains of aging mice by
turning on a switch inside their cells.”
This
reads, beautifully:
“The
mice, WHO ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF ELDERLY MEN (my favorite part), had all the
classic signs of old age: Their brains were smaller… they were going blind...
they stopped having sex... their hair was gray... and they couldn’t find their
way through a maze or remember where their food was.”
But
when this Harvard professor hit the switch in their cells, the tissues and
organs in their body -- including their brains -- started to regenerate and
grow back to normal size.
From
the report: “Even a slight change in brain size would have been a miracle... but
what happened was remarkable… The gray hair was gone. So was the poor eyesight
and shrunken brains. In fact, there was nothing left that could distinguish
them as ‘old.’” (Except the baby blue jumpsuits they wore?)
This
“Age-Reversing Switch can be turned on in us too!,” states the report, through increased
production of telomeres, “the enzyme that helps you rebuild the ‘biological
clocks’ at the end of your DNA.” The report claims that once the mice had their
telomerase turned on, shrunken organs grew (hello!), key organs functioned
better, the mice got their sense of smell back and, my second favorite part, “the
mice went on to live long healthy lives.”
Good
for them! And if you wish to try telomeres, good for you. But I want to know if
this improved for the mice:
Did
they still have to use reading glasses?
If
so, were they able to consistently FIND their reading glasses, and how many
pair, within 10, did each have located at different strategic reading spots at
whatever house or field or automobile or office they were infesting?
Did
their butts grow back? (One day I looked back there and someone had stolen
mine. It had followed me around for more than 40 years and then, poof!)
Did
they become younger than their preacher and doctor again?
Did
it still seem to them that Arnold Palmer should be in his 50s and were they
still consistently surprised to recall, throughout the summer, that the Houston
Astros were now in the American League?
Could
they rip the “Only White Tees and Decaf” bumper stickers off their golf carts?
That’s
what I’D like to know.
Meanwhile,
we males who are getting older (and smaller) can at least appreciate, first-hand,
old dude humor, something we couldn’t do back before we discovered the hauntings
of ear hair.
For
instance:
One
old guy asked another how he was feeling. “Like a newborn baby,” he said. “No
hair, no teeth, and I think I just wet my pants.”
And,
an old guy was telling his neighbor he’d just bought a new state-of-the-art
hearing aid that costs $4,000 but was perfect.
“Really,”
the neighbor said. “What kind is it?”
“12:30.”
And
finally, the show-stopper that I shouldn’t even tell you:
The
old man limps into the ice cream parlor, makes it to the stool and orders a
banana split.
The
waitress says, “Crushed nuts?”
“No,”
he says. “Arthritis.”
-30-
