This is the first column I've ever written on the subject of "being over 55." It's not a stretch, as I have six years experience in the age range; but as an over-55 boomer living in a world of over-55 boomers, I feel a little like a fish asked to do 750 words on water, or a brontosaurus asked to knock out a short piece on extinction.
Age, of course, is a lot different than how old we are. A couple of years ago I was conducting a journalism workshop in a town in Armenia where most of the trainees were in their early 20's. During a break I mentioned to my translator that I would soon be 60. She protested that I must be kidding and then brought the class to attention to ask if anyone believed I was that old. The consensus was that I must be exaggerating because I barely even looked 50 years old maybe 45.
To put my age into perspective, the 60-year-olds these kids knew had lived through collapse of the USSR which destroyed their economy, left them surrounded by unfriendly countries, cut off their supplies of gas and heating oil for three frigid years. During that time the people came close to deforesting Armenia to provide fire wood. Then just when it looked like things couldn't get worse, an earthquake killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed nearly one out of six housing units in the entire nation then assassins invaded the Armenian parliament and killed the Prime Minister and several other reform leaders.
Given the wear and tear the average Armenian sexagenarian has endured, the average American 60-year-old is a low-mileage model in like-new condition.
But none of us is totally immune to the decay that comes with each passing year. A couple of decades ago I attended the 50th birthday party of a TV news anchor I worked with. As a career journalist I knew full well that, contrary to popular belief, there are such things as stupid questions, so I swung for the fence and asked him, "How does it feel to turn 50?"
He locked his thoughtful gaze on me, leaned so close that I could feel the pull of his gravitas, and he said, "You don't turn fifty. Fifty grabs you by the ears, kicks you in the groin and throws you on the ground."
I know people my age who are wizened husks who haven't had an original thought in decades, while others, just as old chronologically are still out running marathons and shifting paradigms. This weekend I visited a 66-year-old friend who is leaving the security of a senior position with a billion dollar foundation in Chicago to open a new business. A 70-year-old friend of my wife's here on San Juan Island announced recently that she was selling her house and moving to the mainland because she had "done every unmarried guy on the island" and wanted a larger pool of social partners.
I put myself somewhere in the middle of the age versus aging scale. Sometimes I feel like I'm still a kid and sometimes I'm ready to believe that every time I have a sore joint or aching back, it's destined to be with me for the rest of my life. Later, when it dawns on me that the pain has gone away, I go out and jog a little, shoot a few baskets, then check the mirror to make sure my youthful spirit isn't being followed around by an old man's butt. I find it helps if you squint.
Ask a fish what he thinks about water and it would probably say, "It's freakin' water, what's to think about?"
Ask me what it's like being over 55 years old and I'd have to say, "It's just freakin' like yesterday and the day before and the day before that, all the way back to when I was eighteen and couldn't muster the courage to ask Gina Bilyeu to go to the prom until it was too late."
When she told me she had just, moments earlier, agreed to go with someone else, it dawned on me that I would never, ever in this life have another opportunity to ask her to go to a prom with me. That was the day when I started to understand the nature not of growing older but of growing old.
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