Good Old Mike, of Mike's Appliance Service

(Newton NH, I recommend him highly indeed), yanked the stove out, tinkered with the heating element in the oven, muttered a little under his breath, went down to the service panel in the cellar and jiggered stuff a bit, came back upstairs, tinkered some more, muttered a little more, and announced that it was not, after all, new stove time, but that the old ark would be back on the air entirely with a new oven element, and in the meantime the cooktop was fine and we could broil if we wanted. I mentioned this to a pal, who was aware of the fact that in the past twelvemonth we've replaced our water heater and furnace, not to mention retired an old car with over 200,000 miles on it. "Jeez," he said, "It's like getting old. Things just keep wearing out." And so, it seems, they do, and it emerged that he was speaking more specifically of anatomical and physiological infrastructure, since we've arrived at the point in our lives where, when three pals get together for a bit of lunch, the beers are barely opened when talk has turned to the latest visits to this or that doctor or diagnostic procedure. We're collections of lumps and bumps and jitters (oh my) and hitches in our collective gitalongs, but it is not without its boon, for the fact of our entropy lends truth to the old saw "the older I get, the better I was."

Just not the way we usually mean it.