So many of my friends have spoken lately about how their lives have become smaller. Where parties, loads of friends and social engagements were a big part of their time, that isn’t the case any longer.
I thought it was just me.
Of course there was a pandemic that kept everyone antisocial for over a year. We were secluded in our homes, talking to most people over Zoom or Face Time or chatting on the phone. Or even at times to ourselves!
Whether or not COVID has anything to do with slowing your party roll or not, I can’t say for sure.
But I have noticed that I have become dependent on new besties that I run to in times of need. A slew of new BFFs that I can truly count on and know will be there for me? More friends all the better, right?
I suspect others may have adopted these new buddies as well.
Please let me list a few.
Top of the list for new BFF would have to be my heating pad. I’ve been through many already. Heating pad is always there to offer help. To warm and comfort me when I am aching or stiff. Even when I am sore in places I didn’t realize I had places and to restore balance to my body and equilibrium. The new ones have new shapes and soft fabric that adds that soft cushy feel to the radiating heat. If this sounds like a commercial for heating pads, it is. If I could wrap myself in one like a blanket as I go about my day, just call me Chief Aching Joints.
Who could know that I would be so dependent of a piece of cloth that exists to only heat up and stop pain. Oh sure you need friends for emotional pain, but heating pad just sits there, totally lacking in personality. It possesses no ability to make me laugh, do the housework or throw in a load of wash, but it beats a robot vacuum by miles.
When I was young my mother was always lying on her heating pad. Then I didn’t understand how anyone could be so attached to a square piece of warm cloth, but now I see. The fact they haven’t changed in all these years speaks volumes. Oh sure the fabrics and sizes may have been modified, but they continue to do one job and one job only. Perhaps a lesson in the old adage, jack of all trades master of none. I’d say old heating pad is a master at what it does, and I’m not alone in that assessment.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my new buddy, Melatonin. Who knew? Not that there’s melatonin, but that I would ever have trouble sleeping. I used to literally fall into bed and within minutes I’d nod off to dreamland like someone who had just plowed forty acres without the mule. However, things changed and now it’s like plowing forty acres to get to sleep. Oh we try everything. Watching TV, listening to relaxation tapes, music, playing mental alphabet games. Despite the fact you ultimately fall asleep, in an hour or two you’re up again to make that first of many trips to the bathroom. Yep, the days when you could just lie down and actually sleep through the night are all gone.
Another of my new besties is, drumroll please, Physical Therapy. Go figure the best part of my day would be going to stretch, strain and then the best part, the massage. Oh glory how a massage can undo the stress of well, all the things stressful about this getting old thing. Then at the end they put this electrical current thingy on, I think they call it a E-stim, and a heating pad or ice and you lie there just soaking up the heat thinking how did I ever live without this? You leave feeling looser, calmer and in less pain than when you came. Who couldn’t love an experience like that?
And to think I used to think finding a new chocolate bar was soothing.
As if these old age goodies aren’t enough to add to the new best friend list, we have a whole group of buddies made up of what I call body helpers.
Stuff that makes everything easier. Wrist, knee and neck braces, lidocaine patches, handfuls of supplements each day. There are drawers full of band aids, pain relievers, bandages, antibiotic creams and all kinds of other tubes and potions. These are designed to heal and fend off pain and protect our ability to be mobile and independent. And let’s not forget lip liner for women. Oh that pesky disappearing lip line.
Sure it sounds crazy to signify these things as BFFs but let’s face it, what are friends for?
To comfort, share experiences with you, listen to you, uplift and just be there to try and boost you when you’re down.
All these things do that without even talking, offering advice or pointing out a better way to go.
Once our skates, footballs, bikes, basketball hoops, swimming pools, TV sets and cars along with so many other things we took for granted when young were our besties, along with our real-life friends of course. Now we also rely on new ones. Oddly we seem to even appreciate new and old friends a bit more. Perhaps that comes with aging as well.
Sure our choices have changed along with our bodies, but our minds haven’t gotten the memo. I still think I’m twenty-one and despite evidence otherwise, these new BFFs keep the illusion partially alive.
So a big toast to new friends, even as we appreciate the old ones even more.
Has anyone tried that new red light therapy thingy? Are they safe? Oh well, I hear it keeps you young so on my way out to try one now. After all, you can never have too many friends.
NormaZager.com 