hoo

Soon I will be the age that the Beatles crooned about when I was 17 and Sergeant Pepper was the rage.  At the time, their lyrics, "will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64" had me conjuring up a gimpy, gray haired me, doing not much more than parking myself in an easy chair adjacent to my spouse as we watched the television together, joking about how we were ancient.

It is true that today after I stretched in the gym, it took a lot of time to get up off the mat.  And my walk to the car after I dressed will not be recorded for a "how to amble comfortably" demonstration. And there is gray around my temples. And when I got a haircut this noontime the "barber" (no barbers anymore--hairstlylist?) commented about how thick my hair was on the side of my head implicitly, of course, commenting that this is a phenomenon since you could count the hairs on the top without spending much time at it.   And after I played tennis on Thursday I decided to sit in the hot tub for 20 minutes to relax my muscles. And tonight if I make it until 1030 before conking out, I will be surprised.

All the above is true. But I don't see myself as the person I conjured up when I listened to the Beatles song.  Yet am I?  I do notice that people in restaurants tend to call me sir quite a bit. When I was visiting my father in his senior community recently people no longer looked at me--as they had previously-- as if I were visiting.  I asked at a restaurant what the age was for the senior discount listed on the menu. The waiter took a look at me and said, as if this would comfort me, "Don't worry. You're fine."

My best guess is that I am not who I imagined and am much younger.  But today marks one month before that song will be about me.  I'd think about this matter more right now, but I am getting sleepy.  I will not, however, warm up any milk before I get ready to slumber.