Yeah, It's Been a Year Already

Today is once again my Birthday.  I usually keep the celebrations low key, not because of any inherent hatred of getting older, but because we just exited the Christmas season, and I, for one anyway, am flat partied out.

Today is my 54th birthday. Well, actually it is the 54th anniversary of my birth day, but no need to become semantic. Unless I want to become semantic. And it's MY birthday, I'll do as I dang well please.

Sorry; I had to get that out of my system.

I use my birthday as a day to review the last year and preview the coming one. To calculate the gains and losses; who I saw born and who I saw buried. To determine if I feel as old as I am.

To me, age is really an average of two things; how old the calendar says you are and how old you feel. When we are young, those two generally coincide, if we ever give any thought to it. 40 is when things start to go awry, usually because that is when we are first asked how old we feel. And then we start thinking about it. I don’t think being 40 is the cause of all of our aches and pains; I think being 40 and acting 25 is the cause of all of our aches and pains.

But the truth is I don't feel any older than I did at 25. Unless I am trying to get up from lying on the floor. Used to be I could pop up like a jack-in-the-box. Now it’s more like watching bread rise, and takes almost as long. That is proof of my failing memory; I can't remember NOT to get down on the floor in the first place.

I know I’m not alone. Everybody I know is facing the same thing, whether they want to admit it or not. But the fact that everybody is in the same boat doesn't help; it just makes it a very crowded boat.

Jimmy Buffet has an old song (from 1980; yeah, I know to my peers, that ain't old) "I'm Growing Older But Not Up"; it is, in my opinion, an anthem of the American over 50. He was 34 when he wrote it. And 64 when he performed it here.

None of us wants to admit not how old we are, but how much we have aged. Like the old joke says; Anybody who claims they can do at 50 what they did at 20, didn't do squat at 20. None of us wants to admit that we are incapable of doing the things we used to do. Toby Keith said it best; “I Ain’t As Good As I Once Was”; another anthem of the over 50 crowd.

You can see, I guess where I am going with this? The calendar tells me that in 366 more days I will be closer to 60 that to 50; closer to 70 than 40; and I'll stop before decide to grab a beer at 9:00 on a Sunday morning.

Which is something I would have done when I was younger. When 9:00 Sunday morning was just late on a Saturday Night.