Ok, so I’m not really over the hill. The top is within sight though. Two weeks from today I hit the big 50. The half century mark. 2.4 times the legal drinking age. When Mozart was my age he had been dead for fifteen years.
In life, there are certain ages that have significance. At the age of one year, you have spent your first entire year on this planet. At ten years you have finally hit double digits. Sixteen years, you get your drivers license. When you are eighteen you have the right to vote. Twenty-one, you are allowed to experience your first legal hangover. The day you reach twenty-five the insurance industry believes, sometimes mistakenly, that you are no longer an idiot and they lower you car insurance premiums. When you hit thirty-five you can run for president. Then you have a fifteen year lull. I am now approaching the end of that lull and about to hit that next chronological milestone, the age of fifty.
I have already received my first piece of junk mail from AARP. That was quite a sobering experience. It seemed to be their way of saying, “Congratulations, you’re old. Send us money and join other old people. We even have a magazine about old people. You’ll love our articles on prostate problems”. To which I say, “Ummmm, no thanks”.
The past few months that have lead up to this event of personal significance, I have become somewhat reflective. No, I don’t shine when a beam of light hits me. Ok, there is that one spot on my head where I used to have hair and it does kinda shine when the light hits it just right. That, however, is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about looking back over all the things that I have and haven’t done in my life. This, as it turns out, has been something of a let down. I really haven’t done much of anything. Nothing of significance at least. Nope, it’s been fifty years of making it from one week to the next. My biggest accomplishment has been making it to the age of fifty. This isn’t to say I haven’t done some pretty cool things in those fifty years. I have and I have decided to try to come up with a list of these things. While in the grand scheme of things they are insignificant, they do have meaning to me. Cool things I have done.
1. I have acted in plays.
2. I was in a couple of Musicals.
There is a difference because, while I can act, I’m pretty lousy when it comes to singing and dancing.
3. I have flown in a Lear Jet.
4. I have ridden a bicycle 138 miles in one day.
5. I have done radio
6. I have had cartoons published in magazines.
Yep, actual hand drawn cartoons. No photoshop involved.
7. I have seen the rings of Saturn through a telescope.
8. I have seen a ghost……or some shadowy thing.
Weird story but happened when I was a kid.
9. I’ve had a letter to the editor published
10. I’ve done two magazine covers that were published.
11. I’ve built a computer.
12. I’ve given my last dollar to a total stranger who needed it.
13. I’ve fallen off a dam.
More down than off truthfully. It was kind of like a big, slimy water slide.
14. I have seen a comet.
15. I hit a home run in a little league game.
16. I scored the first basket in a charity basketball game.
17. I have been put in charge of a business that was losing money and made it profitable.
18. I have been slapped by one girl and kissed by another for the exact same thing.
19. I have been camping in the dead of winter.
Not in some place like Florida but in northern Illinois. Snow, Ice, all that good wintry stuff.
20. I have read all of the works of Shakespeare.
To be continued.
Ok, enough for now. I’ll continue this on my next post.
