The Misanthrope's Corner.(effects of aging)(Brief Article)(Column)

Thank you for the birthday gifts, including the four low-tech alarm clocks, one of which, as my vigilant post office noted, arrived ticking. We have given "white noise" new meaning and rewritten an old adage: "Be careful what you wish for; NR readers might send it to you."

The arrival of my 66th birthday finds me confronting a hard fact: I'm turning into an odd duck. There are some who would not regard this as a new development, but I refer to the psychological changes said to come with advancing age.

The most surprising change is that I no longer love to read the way I once did. I used to read one book after another-literally-finishing one and immediately starting a second, spending whole days reading books by the yard. Now I pick up a book, read a few pages, see right through the author, and toss it aside in disgust. All I feel like reading now are a few beloved books that I've read over and over, like Katherine, by Anya Seton.

I also cancelled all my subscriptions except the Washington Post and NR. Most columns and op-eds seem so predictable to me now; I can read the first paragraph and know exactly where it's going, so why pay for that? I've been gleefully adding up my refunds like a miser-something I've never been, in my free-spending, big-tipping life. Chalk up another change.

The subscription I resented the most was that rock quarry of the printed word, the Sunday New York Times. I wasn't reading anything in it except Maureen Dowd, who is an "uneven" writer (good when she's good; "off" the rest of the time). I kept remembering the old Peter Arno cartoon of an exhausted dog, feet splayed, tongue hanging out, clearly moribund, being examined by a vet. The caption reads: "I see he's been retrieving the Sunday New York Times." I felt like the dog.

I kept telling myself that I needed to subscribe "for professional reasons," but finally admitted that the only thing I enjoyed was the acrostic in the magazine. I tried to subscribe to the magazine only, but was told you can't: They know in their hearts that the puzzle page is all most people want, so to keep from going bankrupt they make you subscribe to the whole paper.

Spending $200 a year on a puzzle was ridiculous, so I cancelled, deciding to xerox the acrostic at the public library. Trouble was, somebody had torn the puzzle page out of the magazine before I got to it. (See what I mean? Nobody in his right mind would steal the op-ed page.) When the librarian saw it, she volunteered to call another branch to see if they had an intact magazine, and have them fax the page to me. They did, and in minutes I had my acrostic.