Most of the prescriptions I have ever gotten warn me not to drive, operate heavy equipment or use a chainsaw while taking the medicine — which was never a big problem when I was young and lived in Manhattan. I didn’t own a car or a chainsaw, and operating heavy equipment was so far out of my comfort zone, it wasn’t even an issue. Pretty much the same for light equipment.

I thought the only people who owned chainsaws were serial killers and Mafia enforcers. When watching the news after a hurricane or tornado had hit some unfortunate town, it always seemed strange to see homeowners emerge from their houses lugging giant chainsaws and start cutting apart fallen trees. Where did they learn how to use them? How often does this town get hit by tornadoes? If it’s a regular thing, I’m not sure owning a chainsaw will solve the problem. Maybe there’s something about chainsaws that attracts tornadoes.

But now that I live in a real place that is not Manhattan, a place where people drive cars and live in houses with yards and operate heavy equipment for a living, I realize that a chainsaw is a handy thing to have around. I’ve learned that even a garden-variety thunderstorm, the kind that will never make the national news, can leave a lot of downed tree limbs in its wake, most of them in my backyard. My chainsaw has paid for itself many times over.

But as I get older, along with most of my friends and neighbors, I now take lots of medicines all the time, not just for a week while something gets better. Nothing we have now is going to get better. All the medicines we take, we take to keep things from getting worse. And they all seem to have side effects and warning labels.

The caution not to operate heavy equipment and chainsaws is still very popular, but one is new to me. The warning on a common medicine taken by almost 100 percent of the residents of places with names like Sun City and Valley of the Sun says, “Avoid exposure to direct or artificial sunlight while on this medication.”