Just a Matter of Time

Image result for guy from movie up with walker"When we think of ourselves in the future, and i'm not talking 10 or 20 years from now I mean like 40 or 50 years, we can hope we had a successful job, loving family, and now are living out our retirement somewhere warm with our spouse and 2 golden retrievers. With only our plans for the day and our many grandchildren on our mind. In reality, although some of this may be true we tend to forget a very important aspect, at that ripe old age, we won't have the agility and sharpness we had some decades ago. Instead, unless you age like fine wine, you will probably be reading the sunday morning paper behind thick glasses that make your eyes appear 3 times larger, the volume of the tv will be kept at the maximum setting, and it might take a few tries to get up off the couch where you will then use a cane, walker, or wheelchair to get around. The truth is although we hope we will maintain the spunkiness of teenagers into old age, it doesn't work like that. Author Nancy Mairs provides a term that represents the majority of us, and that is "TAPs, or Temporarily Abled Persons" (Mairs p.7). It is very accurate as our abilities now are only temporary. By the time we are gray and wrinkly the chances that we have some sort of disability is very high. In the time being however, the people who exited the TAPS phase or we're never in it to begin with should not be seen as anything but normal because we will all be there someday, its just a matter of time.

Comments

  1. Stefan LemkeFebruary 2, 2020 at 12:49 PM

    I like the direct way you write about us being "gray and wrinkly", it really puts things into perspective. I think a lot of the acceptance has to come from the older generation of formerly abled people with a new perspective on life, and then the younger generations can follow.

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  2. Lauren GoldenFebruary 2, 2020 at 5:54 PM

    Mairs’ term TAP couldn’t fit the concept of old age and better! It’s so true how no matter what we want to be as an old person, we simply have little control over how our bodies will age. Eventually, everyone is bound to have some type of issue due to age which fits with the term “temporarily abled person”; and I know I’m definitly not going to be an “abled person” forever.

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  3. Sawyer DarishFebruary 2, 2020 at 7:08 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Sawyer DarishFebruary 2, 2020 at 7:09 PM

    I really liked how you took a word, in which none of us had heard of before, and fully analyzed it. Your analysis is so true and really explains the concept behind this label so that us readers can get a clear picture of what Mairs was saying.

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