Maybe it’s true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.

There are three signs of old age. The first is your loss of memory. I forget the other two.

You’re getting old when you don’t care where your spouse goes, just as long as you don’t have to go along (especially if it’s a shopping trip; the only thing I enjoy about that is a good meal!).

Middle age is when work is a lot less fun…and fun is a lot more work.

Statistics show that at the age of seventy, there are five women to every man. Isn’t that a bad time for a guy to get those odds?

You know you’re getting on in years when the girls at the office start confiding in you (that really happens to me as males in my office are definitely in the minority).

Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired.

By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he’s too old to go anywhere.

Middle age is when you have stopped growing at both ends and have begun to grow in the middle.

A man has reached middle age when he is cautioned to slow down by his doctor instead of by the police.

You know you’re into middle age when you realize that caution is the only thing you care to exercise.

The aging process could be slowed down if it had to work its way through Congress.

You’re getting old when you’re sitting in a rocker and you can’t get it started.

You’re getting old when you wake up with that morning-after feeling…and you didn’t do anything the night before.

The cardiologist’s diet: if it tastes good, spit it out!

Doctor to patient: I have good news and bad news…the good news is that you are not a hypochondriac.

It’s hard to be nostalgic when you can’t remember anything.

You know you’re getting old when you stop buying green bananas.

Last Will and Testament: Being of sound mind, I spent all my money.

You find yourself in the middle of the stairway and you can’t remember if you were downstairs going up or upstairs going down.

Important numbers at my age are 17 around the neck, 42 around the waist, and 95 around the golf course.

Fun at the beach now includes a metal detector.

You’re getting old when…. the gleam in your eyes is from the sun hitting your bifocals; your little black book contains only names that end in M D; you finally reach the top of the ladder and find it leaning against the wrong wall; you look forward to a dull evening; and/or your favorite part of the newspaper is “25 Years Ago Today.”

Aging can also be defined as the time of life when your ears are hairier than your head; you get into a heated argument about pension plans or the your decision to pay for cable TV in order to have access to The Weather Channel (better known as “Old Folks MTV).

And, my favorite….When you lean over to pick something up off the floor, you ask yourself if there is anything else you need to do while you are down there (I actually perform that feat all the time; why waste the energy to bend over again!).

The now 60-year-old Cal Bryant is Editor of Roanoke-Chowan Publications. He can be reached at cal.bryant@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7207.