Yup, today is my birthday and I’m 70. I guess I can’t say I’m middle-aged any longer. Three score and ten is beyond that. Not even ‘late middle-aged’ cuts it any more. If I’d lived in ancient Rome I’d now be very very old – average age then was 40ish. Okay, but, as has been said, it beats hell out of the alternative. This year I have four books to write, a dozen stories, two dozen articles, a lot of reviews, and other items too. I may be 70 but I’m certainly not going to have time to dwell on it.
Mind you, in my teens I was reckless – something common to teens even now. But looking back I’m surprised I survived to this age. There was the time when, at 16, I was in his car with a friend. We were racing another friend. I was driving, no, I know I can’t drive, I couldn’t then either. I was steering, my friend was working the clutch and accelerator. I passed the other car – doing around 110mph (note that’s miles not kilometres) and swung back ahead of it a bit too sharply. I tunked his front corner with the back corner of the car I was ‘driving,’ lost the car, swerved, back, over again, back again, and then the car rolled. Several times, and taking out a length of a farmner’s boundary fence. The car came to rest, we staggered out, quite uninjured, got the car out of the fencing and drove home. Yes, we went back and fixed the fence, and no, pretty much no one HAD seat belts then. And that was only one of the damfool things I did in those days. So I’m happy I’ve made it this far, back then I never expected to. But then, they do say that only the good die young…
I’m Officially Elderly.
3 April 2016
Yup, today is my birthday and I’m 70. I guess I can’t say I’m middle-aged any longer. Three score and ten is beyond that. Not even ‘late middle-aged’ cuts it any more. If I’d lived in ancient Rome I’d now be very very old – average age then was 40ish. Okay, but, as has been said, it beats hell out of the alternative. This year I have four books to write, a dozen stories, two dozen articles, a lot of reviews, and other items too. I may be 70 but I’m certainly not going to have time to dwell on it.
Mind you, in my teens I was reckless – something common to teens even now. But looking back I’m surprised I survived to this age. There was the time when, at 16, I was in his car with a friend. We were racing another friend. I was driving, no, I know I can’t drive, I couldn’t then either. I was steering, my friend was working the clutch and accelerator. I passed the other car – doing around 110mph (note that’s miles not kilometres) and swung back ahead of it a bit too sharply. I tunked his front corner with the back corner of the car I was ‘driving,’ lost the car, swerved, back, over again, back again, and then the car rolled. Several times, and taking out a length of a farmner’s boundary fence. The car came to rest, we staggered out, quite uninjured, got the car out of the fencing and drove home. Yes, we went back and fixed the fence, and no, pretty much no one HAD seat belts then. And that was only one of the damfool things I did in those days. So I’m happy I’ve made it this far, back then I never expected to. But then, they do say that only the good die young…