Life's path

There are layers to life, I think. When you look back or forward in you life, there are twists and turns which occur at specific stages of life.

Like the early years, when you chipped your tooth playing football in the front yard. Grade school and then high school was when you discovered girls were dopey and then girls cause us to be dopey. College years or post high school were when you wanted to exercise your sophistication with smoking a pipe, drinking beer, discussing Milton, or discussing the validity of Fifty-cent (for the older group-he's a rapper and only God knows how he spells his name). Post college years we're spent looking for a mate.

Then we moved into child years or traveling in search of ourselves; or we're in jail. There's a long stretch here where we're running fast and hard. Once the kids are grown and start to cycle out, we look around for something to filling the void. First, there's the long awaited nap. But that doesn't last. You can only take so many of those during the day. You start going to things, like the symphony. Some, finish their spousal duties and move on to others-again. Others, move into different phases with their partners and look for what phase is next.

As the years pass, comfort becomes the command of the day. Instead of that 1977 Gremlin you nursed for years, you live on the edge with a Kia, a brand new one. You get your hair done differently, you daily try to stay ahead of the ear hair. You've become fluent in HDL and LDL dialog. And later, you begin to take interest in news reports on what the Federal government is doing with Social Security and Medicare.

In your fifties, which is where I am finding myself now, I am dramatically closer to the end than to the beginning. But I remember, with advantages, what feats I did those days. My youth is but a thought away and sometimes, like yesterday, still thinking I can leap tall buildings or at least find I can still leap up on a short wall without the use of a ladder, to check my mister system for my front porch. I was kind of proud of that little hop. The old man can still move. Of course this morning, as I write to you and sip my coffee, KYOT playing their Sunday set of melodic music in the background, and two of my favorite things laying at my feet, I have a dull pain in one of my hips. Brought on, of course, by something other than my leap of youth yesterday.

So, what's next? At this point of my life, what is coming up? They say that fifty is the old forty. So, I guess I am equal to what my father was at forty huh? Well, okay. I can live with that. I just don't want to go to ninety. I think if I went to ninety those last few years would not be as cute as the first few years. Lots of talking at high volume. "MR. WILLIAMS, DO YOU WANT TO GO DOWN THE CAFETERIA AND HAVE SOME MUSH?" Nope, I think at that point we take stock in where we are and look at a cab ride to the Golden Gate Bridge, take a walk out to the first tower and take one last leap, with the intent of hitting a passing luxury liner. Wow, now that would be fun! Yep, I want to always be able to leap tall buildings, or at least a short wall.