sixty

Sixty… (in just a couple more days)

Sheeeesh.

I’m old. By any and all ways I have ever determined or defined being old… I’m there.

Right now. Me. Sixty years old. I’m the oldest fart at any parties I’m invited to be at. I’m the last to show up, and the first to leave. I might as well be a designated driver. If I was a suicide bomber, my victims would feel cheated and insulted. If I was stranded on the space station, I would be ejected as “space debris”.

The years have just crept up on me. Sixty. Pow! Right now. Here I am. In the blink of an eye.

It seems like just yesterday when the cocky young man that was me dismissed anyone over 60 as being “out of touch”. What irony that my own children angrily dismiss me in their own clouds of dust. How did I wind up with four angry ex-wives? Karma?

Fuck. I get dismissed by anyone under 50 now.

Hell…59?

I might as well be a hermit. Oops. Shit. I’ve been doing that for 12 years already. No wonder I can’t relate to anyone (not you, B). How can a free man relate to a slave? How can an extremely independent and frugal man relate to what the media tells everyone is right and normal? How can I look up to someone who eats white bread? Diet soda? Wears a tie? Drives a big pickup? Wastes the big bucks for concerts or pro sports games? Pays money for a song? I do dismiss them all right back.

I think I’ve always been this way.

I remember some of those over 60 year old farts back in my small hometown in Iowa. Stuck in the past, they were right about ignoring so much of what has amounted to the corporate influence and distortion of our knowledge database. They’re all dead now, just as I will succumb in the next blink of my eye. So many of my classmates and peers haven’t even made it this far. Most of them suffer from injuries and illnesses.

What’s wrong with me?

On the other hand, perhaps I should be happy I was born in 1952 in the U.S. I may get to live through, witness, and/or be a part of the most dramatic changes ever seen on the face of the earth by a single species in the shortest amount of time. One single lifespan. From a world of freedom, caring, nurturing, building, developing… to one of blatant corruption, military intervention, technological bewilderment, media manipulation, medical deification…

Being 60, not only am I entitled to fart at will in Walmart, but I can now change the subject any god damn time I feel like it.

Hey! I’m old. I’m sixty.

Check out my gray hairs, covering every part of my body. There ain’t no possible genetically selective reason for them to keep growing longer and in a new direction every day. They’ve just gone mad. Look at my underarms flapping in the wind? Sexy, huh? Batwings? Watch as each bag under my eyes can hold a silver dollar. (Oops. Those aren’t around any more.) When I reach down, the back of my hands show a road map of Boston (worst city I ever drove through). My toes point in as many directions as the sign pole at the North Pole.

BTW… IMPORTANT WARNING!! I have recently come to believe that all these elderly ladies with legs that pour over their socks, arms with great wrinkles and folds, and chins as rippled as corrugated roofing… have fastidiously peeled every morsel of their food before cooking for over four decades. These are lips that have never touched chicken skin, apple peels, or potato peelings. Graters and peelers are built into their left hands. Men (in general) are too lazy to peel. If you see a man with these problems, a very similar wife will be standing right beside them.

Yes. I’m sixty now and can get away with these accusations. Yell at me in one ear and my poor hearing comprehension will push it out the other. Call me grumpy.

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I’ve noticed that I eat slower, too. I savor each bite like it’s my last meal. I pray with the intent that it makes me feel good. I pray with the same intent before I shit as well. My best races are when I make it to the bathroom at 2 am… and at 5 am.

Happy birthday, Udder! Light up a doobie and be somewhere else.

Sheeeeesh.