I'M SIXTY, AND HYPERVENTILATING
Well, here it is! It finally happened! I tried to slow down the wheels of time, but it just wasn't happening. I tried to ignore it as the days approached, pretending it just wasn't going to happen to me. I even smiled when some cantankerous people (you know who you are, and you will get yours) kept reminding me of it. I plied the theory that maybe, just maybe, if I ignored it long enough, it would just forget all about me and go away....not go away mad, understand, just go away quietly, forgetting me for about twenty more years. Maybe it would just pass me on by. It could happen! But here it is... and I guess there's no escaping it.
When I peeked out from under my covers this morning, there it was, smiling back at me with this big lasagna-eating grin! The big 6-0... 60, sixty... can you believe it? That's six decades, you know, 6X10 of this foolishness... over half a century. It doesn't matter a whole bunch how you say it, it's not going to really change the affect sixty has on you. Now, just be honest. I'm a real, bona-fide, honest to goodness senior citizen. I've had time to think it over considerably, and I'm all right with being sixty. Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!! Say it isn't soooooooooooooooooo!!! I don't wanna go.........
Now get over it... just get over it, I tell you. No matter how you say it, sixty will take its toll... sixty is like that, you know. It's not what you'd call one of your better years, despite all the press that it gets. Now, twenty-seven, I liked that one... I liked that one a lot... college, the girls, living away from home, the girls, self-dependence, the girls, a new car... and did I mention the girls. Weren't they something! Now you say I'm sixty... God forbid! What effect will it have on me... arthritis, rheumatism... senility? Is it true that everything is all downhill from here? Why, I still haven't even got my Mercedes Benz. Where did it all go? I still feel young, not quite a young kid again... God, I wouldn't want to go through that again. I'm just too darned young to be that darned old, aren't I? I mean, c'mon, be honest... but not that honest, it's just not fair. What are birthdays but numbers anyway? And who's counting? Is there a bean counter somewhere with an evil grin on his face, and a pot full of beans, each representing a year in my illustrious life. Who pays attention to such claptrap anyway? Who cares that the candles from my birthday cake might start a small forest fire way out here in drought-stricken Idaho? Who cares the fire chief done prohibited lighting that many incendiary devices on my birthday cake all at once... though he did make a slight concession. He said I could light 'em ten at a time for six days. Now wouldn't that be something? Just imagine. I had to say no, though. I just couldn't bare the thought of fessing up to sixty, six days running.
I just don't believe it! I won't! I'm not that old, I tell ya. Why won't somebody believe me, huh? There's gotta be someone on my side to fight this age discrimination thing. C'mon, it's a joke, isn't it? I mean, it's a cruel and heartless joke under the best of circumstances, but I can take a joke as well as the next guy... I think... I forget... can't really remember...
What's that, you say? What? Lean a little closer dear, I don't hear quite as well as I use'ter. I'm just a little deef in that there ear since the big war in Vietnam... What? Oh, I see... you're gesturing towards the mirror. There now, I be lookin' at it. I don't see what y'all is a tryin' to point out. What's the fuss? There's just some old geezer sittin' there, lookin' smack-dab at me. Who's that feller think he is, anywho' Gulp! Double gulp!! That can't be... it just can't be... it's me! Oh my land o? Goshen, it is. Yeah, I guess I am sixty... I have to admit it, a little grayer... a little paunchier... a little more dried up and washed out. I'm plumb flabbergasted!
But what's so dagnabbit wrong with that, anyway. That's what I'd like to know. I'm proud of every cotton pickin' gray hair on my cotton pickin' head. I earned every one of 'em, by darned. So I'm sixty... big deal! It's not like the sky's going to fall in on me now, is it? Still, I do look heavenward more often than I've done in awhile. "Always safe, never sorry" is my motto.
Fact is, I'm proud to be sixty. You would be too if you knew the stuff I had to go through to get here. Sixty is a pinnacle. You can see a long way from here... further back to the times I helped form this nation, or at least grease its wheels to keep it running, if I don't forget. Sometimes the memories are hard. Sometimes I can hardly make them out through the tears flowing like a river when my eyes water. I can see further ahead too, sometimes when the light is just right, over the boundaries of this life, and beyond what most people can see. But most times the future's just a puzzle... a conundrum as it were... gotta use my favorite word.
So, what advice do I have to offer as a newly ordained sage? Yeah, that's right... I've got to be a full fledged sage... there's gotta be some perks from my odometer turning over to sixty besides all those senior discounts I now qualify for.
So here ya go:
- To thine own self be true. Listen to the still, small voice inside telling you what not to do, or telling you "Don't go there." That spirit inside you often knows what is best for you. It knows what things, or deeds, will make you happy or unhappy. It knows because it is truly the essence of you... your touch of divinity, the sum of all you've been taught and learned during your tenure on this earth. The second is like unto the first.
- To others, do no harm. Yes, it's true... what goes around, comes around. Call it Karma, or whatever you will, if you throw pie into the face of another, the time will come when you are the recipient of that pie in the face also. Just live and learn... that's what I've been doing... livin' and learnin'. And chances are, I'll get there before you.
- With all thy getting, get going... You know that saying where it says, "Better late than never?" Well when you're sixty, you better get a move on, because never is a little closer and breathing down your neck.
- Just do it! Yeah I know, someone said it first, but do you think I care a hoot? Oh yeah, when you're sixty you're allowed to be crotchety... or so they say... so there!