Terry Flanagan: Aging Gracelessly (Do My Ears Look Larger to You?)

Let’s face it. Getting older isn’t pretty. You’re fighting a losing battle with gravity as body parts begin to sag and droop. The stairs you used to take two at a time start looking like Mount Everest. The hair that used to grow on top of your head has relocated to less desirable neighborhoods.

You occasionally have trouble remembering people’s names, sometimes even your own name, as well as the things you were supposed to pick up at the grocery store.

Your mailbox is full of brochures from “active adult” retirement communities, assisted living facilities, and retirement homes. Your phone rings all day with supplemental Medicare insurance offers. And disturbing changes, besides the wrinkles, are taking place on your face.

This morning, while shaving, I noticed that I was starting to resemble Prince Charles in some respects. I asked Dorothy if my ears seemed larger to her. After giving me a look as if I had lost my mind, she told me that my ears weren’t any larger than they were yesterday, which was not exactly the reassuring answer I was looking for. So I turned to Google, which may not be able to give me any assurances either, but would tell me more about this wonderful phenomenon and what I could look forward to.

It turns out that my question showed up fifth on the list as I was typing in the words ears and larger. So this is obviously a growing concern. Yes, I went for the bad pun.

Anyway, it seems that both men and women can look forward to their ears growing longer, but not wider, thankfully, or we might one day find ourselves airborne in a high wind. But it does mean that eventually a single pair of earmuffs is not going to do the job. Dr. James Heathcote reported in 1995 in the British Medical Journal that a study done on 206 patients revealed that ear length increased approximately 0.22 millimeters per year, which unfortunately means my ears are growing faster than my retirement account.

Other scientific studies seem to bear out Heathcote’s conclusions. Dr. Arthur Perry also reports on the Dr. Oz web site that not only do our ears grow longer, but so do our noses. The cartilage in our noses and ears continues to grow and elongate due to gravity as long as we live. Great, I’ve always wanted to look like the Dobby character in the Harry Potter movies. Meanwhile, the truly useful part of the body, the brain, begins declining in growth when we reach adulthood, and possibly sooner, if you consider the anecdotal evidence compiled by the people who hand out the Darwin awards.

So how is one supposed to age gracefully, as some suggest, as one’s proboscis and auditory organs approach elephantine proportions? How does one maintain a sense of decorum when shaking one’s head gives one the appearance of a bloodhound with jowls and ears flapping?

You just have to keep your sense of humor, deal with the fact that you are growing old, and remember, as Dorothy reminds me, that it’s a lot better than the alternative.