Life's Little Milestones...

02/09/2009

Along the road of life we have some little Milestones, some larger Milestones and an occasional Huge Milestone.  Think about it, there is The 1st birthday; The Terrible Twos; The first Day of School; Becoming a Teenager: The 18th and 21st Birthdays; Marriage; The 30th Birthday Dog Days; The Infamous 40th Birthday and the “Over The Hill Party” that comes with it; and after that comes The 45th, aka the official beginning of the Middle Aged years; The Fiftieth, from which point it is downhill, so I’ve been told ; and lastly, The Last Birthday – everyone of us will have one of those.

Today, February 9, 2009 is a truly big day for me.  This is a huge Life Milestone for yours truly.  Today, I became an official Senior Citizen.  Today, I have reached my Sixty-Fifth Birthday. I rather like to refer to this as the Twenty-Sixth Anniversary of my Thirty-Ninth Birthday.  It is much more palatable that way.  Thirty nine is a good age to be, forever.

I so vividly remember my dad at age sixty five.  Dad was a cool dude, but at sixty five he was old.  He acted old, and he looked old, as a lot of people from his generation did and do.  Somewhere along the path things changed.  These days, thank God, sixty five doesn’t have to be old.  Seventy five doesn’t have to be old.  My brother is seventy seven and doesn’t look or act any older than I.  It’s all in ones attitude, and Lord knows, I haven’t grown up yet, and the chances of it happening anytime soon are very slim.

Being a male senior citizen has perks.  Not just the evident stuff like senior discounts, but some good stuff.  I can stare at a woman’s boobs from now on if I want and not get in trouble for it.  I can fart in public and be excused.  If I fall asleep in a meeting or church (if I went), it is simply passed off as a consequence of being a “senior.” This being an Old Fart may not be so bad.  Just think, I can now go to McDonald’s and get free refills of coffee, and sit around with other seniors (euphemism for Old Fart) who have little or nothing to do and talk about little or nothing to do with anything.  Well, we might talk about boobs or other important stuff like medical conditions.  A visit to McDonald’s isn’t high on my priority list, yet.  I don’t see this happening in my near future, but I won’t swear it couldn’t happen. Things do change.

I remember as a teenager thinking about how in the year 2000 I would be fifty-seven years old and that in 2009 I would be sixty-five years old and probably retired.  Here it is 2009 and I am sixty five with no thought of retiring anytime soon.  I got up this morning thinking about how different my life may be from this point on.  I thanked God for this day, as has become my ritual, and got myself ready to come to work.  It is a new day in a new year of my life.  It is a lot like yesterday, only better.  This day I get to ride a Bull Named Fu Manchu and Live Like I were Dying.  It is a great day in my life and I love it.

And that is all I have to say about that…