A Shy Man's Tale. Viewpoints: 8. F. Aging
A Shy Man's Tale. Viewpoints: 8. F. Aging
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty." - Henry Ford
"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." - Mark Twain
As a child, I think I was in too much of a hurry to grow up. I was so serious, and so intent on my education that I'm afraid I may have missed some of the joys of childhood. Unfortunately that hurrying to grow up didn't speed up the process at all.
I think I've aged relatively gracefully. I was very active athletically into my middle thirties (still dunking basketballs at 35, playing softball and tennis). In my forties I was less active, but still played and coached softball and track and field for Special Olympics. At 48 I was still running 100 meters under 14 seconds, and I could run 400 meters backwards in under two minutes (Why do you run 400 meters backwards? How else are you going to coach a deaf girl to run? You can't shout at her, you have to keep in front of her and in her sight and use sign language (mine is pretty primitive). Anyway, it worked.) with the loss of my lower left leg most of that is behind me now, but I still coach. When I was so ill in 2002 I looked older than my age, haggard. After I recovered I now look younger than my age. The wrinkles are very few. There is just a touch of gray hair at my temples (however, if I grew my beard again, there would be lots. Actually that's a lie - there would be some dark brown hair and lots of white...I seem to have skipped gray.) Valerie has aged well as well...very few wrinkles. The one thing that i have noticed about both myself and Valerie is that you can get a good indication of our ages if you are very observant and look at our hands. The damage of injuries incurred to our hands is recorded there. My hands probably look like they belong on someone twenty or thirty years older than me...lots of damaged tendons, knuckles, etc. They still work well enough for me to get my job done, so that's really all I can ask.
Do I mind getting older? No. I could do without a few of the aches and pains, but they aren't that bad. Besides, what's the alternative?
I once had a discussion with a teen ager, and she couldn't see how I could say that every morning I arose being a different person. That's because I try to learn new things every day. I look at a day where I don't learn anything as a wasted day. One thing all that schooling taught me was how much I didn't know...and that list is growing all the time.
"Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative." - Maurice Chevalier
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