“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” Satchel Paige (1906-1982)

Hands in the air, hands on the keyboard…”it’s your birthday, it’s your birthday”…it’s my birthday today.

53 years old…and well marked on the calendar of my soul.

Satchel would be so proud.  He played major league ball into his late 50’s…and minor league ball into his 60’s…I’m still delivering mail and getting up every morning to do it.

But…he’s right about knowing how old you’d be if you didn’t know.  I don’t feel my age until somebody asks me if I’d started to have back problems yet…or asked me how my blood pressure, or blood sugar, or if I still had any blood that hadn’t turned to dust , or any of the other “old blood” questions people ask when you start to get up in the years department.  Then I start to feel old…or at least feel that I’m dipping my toe into the whirlpool that’s sucking the rest of the folk down into their decrepit state of mind.

I guess misery loves company…I guess we love to compare in the hopes that maybe somebody is worse off than we think we are.  A catalog of aches and pains…new indications that we’re no different than anyone else that came before…the club of old.

Did you know that you can join AARP when you turn 50?  Holy Smokes!!!  What kind of conspiracy is that?  Do they want us to feel old before our time?  What the heck.

I’m feeling good.  I choose to feel good.  I am proud to consider myself to be one of the ageless freaks of the world who never grows old…and maybe, by default, never really grows up. ( Maybe growing up is really just embracing all the aches and pains of growing older?  It’s hard to say.)

Here’s to endless youth.

Here’s to immaturity.

Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeeeeeee!

image from www.howstuffworks.com