2016: …betrayed by my own voice

You can run from the Reaper when you are young, but when you get into your sixties it’s pretty hard to reach any state of comfortable denial. My favorite line on aging used to be “Inside of this middle-aged body is a 23 year old screaming “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” and I used to laugh at the old Benny Hill line: “Death is just Life’s way of telling you to slow down” but neither one of those quips give me any comfort any more. I can no longer escape the fact that I am on that part of the slope in middle age that ends up in “old” because I have been betrayed…by myself.

I’m not talking about illness or fatigue keeping me from doing the things I want to do.

I have been betrayed by my voice.

I recently posted a video on Facebook, five minutes of Jayden “stair-surfing” here at the house. As usual he is ever-so-cute but as I was listening to the voice-over I became perplexed:

• I could recognize Lori’s voice.
• I could recognize Meghan’s voice.
• There was no way I could NOT figure out that Jayden was the source of those squeals of delight.
• …but where was that wavering old-man voice coming from?

…then I figured out that I was listening to myself.

While you’d never confuse me with Barry White I’ve always had a certain element of depth to my voice. It showed up most obviously when I sang – it took much less effort for me to slip into the bass line that it did to stay up with the tenors. However, when I heard myself narrating that video clip… I don’t think anyone ever likes to listen to themselves on tape but this time it was not so much a matter of dislike as disbelief.

Any measure of denial I may have had has been dispelled by my own voice. As obvious as it may seem – I’m no kid any more.