Turning Fifty

I am 50 years old today. It all comes at a bad time. I was just hitting my second wind and getting allot of lessons into my thick head. Things like my faith. Things like my priorities and putting away childish things. Things like watching my kids ease out the door and letting them go. Things like hanging out with my wife being all I really feel like doing. The kids are grown. We don’t need sitters. Me and Becky take off together and it’s like we’re dating again. And lunch for two is back to being $21.00 again. And where do we go for lunch? I don’t know… Taos. “Let’s drive up to Taos and eat lunch.”

But as Peter Gabriel once said “I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.”

Right about now the odometer has rolled over for the first time.

I’ve retired from my first “career”.

I’m writing this wearing bifocals. Which means my head is tilted back in a painful position to see through the bottom lenses.

I’ve already had the colonoscopy. I had that done and came back to work the next day and discovered that I had now joined a fraternal “brotherhood” of colonoscopy alumni. Oh, yeah. They all had their “war stories” of when they went through it and now I got mine too.
The hardest part was the GoLYTELY®. If you’re in the “brotherhood” you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s a select fraternity.
BTW, the doc gave me pictures of my colon to take with me. Clean chute all the way up to my belly button. If enough people hit the “like” button I’ll take it as a sign and post them as an album.

Another symptom of growing old is when you have no shame at all discussing your colonoscopy. It’s the new “sexy”.

First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down. Blah, blah, blah…

But the thing that cheers me up the most is remembering how I felt when I turned thirty. It cheers me up because I know now how profoundly wrong I was.
Thirty seemed so old at the time. I thought for sure I should sell my big, bell bottomed, jeans because I was going to be dead soon. (They hadn’t fit for ten years anyway. I kept them as a souvenir all that time. Thought maybe I would get back into them again someday. Hope springs eternal. The waist size was 26 inches. I couldn’t even fit one of my legs into 26 these days. Not even if somebody was holding a gun to my head. You just can’t shove toothpaste back in the tube. It’s impossible.)

Thirty seems so young now. Our daughter was born when Becky and I were thirty. We went through all the dirty diaper and sticky little fingers thing when we were in our thirties. It seems now like we were kids.

And just like I smirk at people whining about turning thirty, people in their seventies are watching people whining about turning fifty and rolling their eyes. “Oh, cry me a river. Enjoy your fifties while they last. Right about now you’re in the ‘sweet spot’. Not too young but not too old. Why do you think it’s called the ‘Golden Anniversary’? I’d go back to being fifty in a heartbeat. ”

The advice is not lost on me.

On another bright note I don’t look fifty. Some of you reading this are probably surprised to hear that I am indeed a quinquagenarian. That’s because I have a rare genetic condition called “Dick Clark Syndrome”. (If you don’t know who Dick Clark is, ask your Mom or Dad or anybody over fifty. If your Mom and Dad aren’t even close to fifty years old yet or nobody you know is fifty and still alive or breathing on their own… Google “Dick Clark”. Still don’t get it? It seemed like he didn’t age. He hosted “American Bandstand” for thirty years and still looked young… Never mind.)

The point is, I have always appeared younger than I am. It used to be a curse. When I was twenty three I looked like I was eleven! For crying out loud I used to get carded just trying to buy a cup of coffee!

These days it’s paying off. Most people think I’m in my high thirties.

Dick Clark Syndrome, baby. And a very, very high volume of coffee consumed daily. Caffeine is “the wind beneath my wings.”

Also, I still have a full head of hair that steadfastly refuses to go gray.

I’d like it to go gray. I wouldn’t mind that at all. I might finally stop getting carded trying to buy coffee.

Unlike Becky who colors hers bi-weekly.

The gray goes straight for the sides of her head so that if she ever piled it high like a bee hive she’d look like the “Bride Of Frankenstein”. (Yes, that would make me Frankenstein. Uh, huh. I get it. )

This is NOT how she wants to be found when the Lord comes back so she colors it for another month.

So I don’t feel depressed about it.
I’ll get my 26 inch waist back in the resurrection, amen?
And, y’know… I MIGHT even fill out this application for AARP that I got in the mail a week ago.
We’ll see how Becky feels when she turns fifty on June 10th. Woa! Ooo…. Pow! Zoom! ROFLOL! “Oh, no you didn’t…”

Aw, yeah. Do the math. I robbed the cradle! ;-)

So I have a good feeling about clocking half a century.

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.

I feel like I have arrived at the front door, my name is on the list, and I have been escorted to my table with a great view of the stage.

Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Shh… Act Three begins now………………………….