What’s with this shit about growing old, anyway? 

Sometime in the last decade or so, total strangers have started addressing me as “sir,” and I no longer have to request my Senior Discount when I check out at the Co-op. If I do, they say, kindly (too kindly), “I’ve already put it in.” My doctor, bless her, drops me a freebie trial run of Viagra or Cialis (whatever they have in their sample cupboard) as I leave, without asking if I’d like some—these are for something discreetly called “ED” in magazines, as if “erectile dysfunction” were just too embarrassing to name. (One goes, according to the ads, directly from steely stallion to droopy disfunction, no gradations of rigidity permitted.) I read that at my age, I shouldn’t worry too much about prostate cancer (which, given the odds, I likely have) because something else will get me first. 

When did this happen, this transition from middle to old age? I’m too young to be old, too dumb to be wise, too spry to die. I’ve got too many places to see, books to read, kisses to savor, moussakas to, well, die for. According to a University of Pennsylvania online life expectancy calculator, I’ve got another 14 years to go, dying in my 86th year, same as my Dad. But c’mon! He was not what you’d call athletic. The “cure” for angina in those days was to avoid any hearty exercise, which he followed faithfully the last 20 years of his life. Me, I swear by the pedometer I wear on my waist: less than 10,000 steps a day and I’ve blown it.

It’ll all catch up to me, of course, as it catches up to us all, lacking empirical evidence to the contrary. (Nope, that three-year-old kid’s tale of joshing with Jesus doesn’t count.) Meanwhile, what does one do? I tend to hang out with people less than half my age, who don’t seem to notice—or at least comment on the fact—that I’m an old fart. I keep traveling, my life goal being to have visited more countries than my age when I kick it. I’m a great cuddler and hugger, firmly believing we mammals were meant to touch on a regular basis. And one day—maybe not this year, but soon, Lakshmi willing, I’ll forgive myself for all the times I screwed up, hurt someone, hurt myself. That should give me at least a couple more years, I reckon.

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Barry Evans gave the best years of his life to civil engineering, and what thanks did he get? In his dotage, he travels, kayaks, meditates and writes for the Journal and the Humboldt Historian. He sucks at 8 Ball. Buy his Field Notes anthologies at any local bookstore. Please.