The real problem with getting old…

…aside from general creaks, groans, and rattles, is that you fall into a kind of time warp, an alternate reality, and things like this from this morning's Chicago Tribune keep turning up.

Spending on traditional medications, such antidepressants, and those for blood pressure and cholesterol, fell 0.6 percent over the first three quarters of the year…

Now to me, a traditional medication is cod liver oil. Which is not really a medication at all, of course, but just a remedy. Antidepressants, however, are certainly not traditional medications to me. Antidepressants are some newfangled thing, the very latest in chemical intervention. Of course, this distinction may simply be due to sloppy writing at the Tribune, but that's another thing.

The other day I run across a statistic that was touted as the highest value seen since we began keeping records. And when did we begin keeping records? 2004. Dude. They might as well have said last Tuesday.