ALTE PISHER

ALTE PISHER

12-5-11

One of the great Jewish sneers is to call an aging gentleman an Alte Kocker. In strict translation, it means a man of distinguished years who shits all the time. Well, obviously, unless diarrhea is involved that doesn't happen very much. The subtle meaning of the phrase is to denigrate the person, to imply that he is not to be taken seriously. As I write this I realize that women, at least in my experience are never called AKs, short hand for the term; no point in wasting energy saying the entire line. No, I don't know why women are not included but a reasonable guess is that no one in the good old days expected women to do anything except marry and have children so there is nothing much to denigrate.

But, much more prevalent among men who reaching their glory years is the reality that they pee more than is seemly. In other words, the aging process turns us into Alte Pishers. The problem in medical terms or among the too snooty to speak of bodily functions is BPH, benign prostate hypertrophy; whatever you call it, it means that we poor souls become considerably more familiar with pissoirs, French for bathrooms. The prostate becomes big and squeezes the tube (What the hell do you call it?) running from bladder to exit device hence the problem. Suffering from AP syndrome means a) that you pee a lot and b) not much comes out. It also means interrupted sleep, getting up three or four times a night to reduce the pressure. Parenthetically, in the old days your doc would stick his properly protected finger up your behind to check its size, but of late that seems no longer medical vogue. Well, I don't mind.

Calling someone an AP in my vast experience is reasonably rare. When I was young I'd refer to some elderly folk as AKs, but the aging process reduces the number of those who deserve the term. Only an exceptionally clever person would call a younger man an AK; the older one becomes, the smaller the population of older folks thus reducing the opportunity. Still, as I write this I think the term fits for Newt Gingrich whose outrageous, mindless pronouncements , I.E. get rid of child labor laws, tell me his gravitas is simply non-existent.

Back to AP. What compounds my problem is that in a miserly way I tend to retain fluids so I am given a medicine that, you guessed it makes me pish. So, wherever I go, my pishdar locates the nearest restrooms so that when the urge appears, as is now common I know exactly where to hasten for bladder relief.So, reaching AP status is another marker along the road to being old. White hair, a bit of macular degeneration, difficulty in getting off the floor after repairing the sink, a low level of persistent arthritic pain, creaky muscles, and a brain that doesn't quite function as in the past are other markers promising that if I survive I'll truly be an old man. I know that some aged people past ninety never seem to age; I fondly hope, with little expectation of fulfilled hope that I well be in that group.

Byron wrote, in Rabbi Ben Ezra (not sure of the title) “grow old with me, the best is yet to be. Bullshit.

If you think about life I'm an ingrate

Consider my crappy old prostate

It demands that I pee

Often two times or three

If there is god that's who I'll berate.