"When I started this song I was still thirty-three
The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free
Keats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would be
And I fantasized some tragedy'd be soon curtailing me
Well just today I had my birthday
I made it thirty-four
Mere mortal, not immortal, not star-crossed anymore
I've got this problem with my aging I no longer can ignore
A tame and toothless tabby can't produce a lion's roar."
Harry Chapin
There Only Was One Choice
Age is such a strange thing. We shouldn't define ones age chronilogically, but mentally. Chronilogically, I am 54, but mentally I feel no different than I did at 25. Physically, well it changes from moment to moment.
Women are far more logical than men. They seem to accept the ultimate inevitable facts of aging. Men don't. My wife has known where she would be buried, long before I had met her. I suppose that I will be buried next to her, but frankly, I don't care.
Don't get me wrong, I can't picture myself becoming an aging man, with a comb-over, shirt unbuttoned to the navel, 4 inch Jewish Star, driving in a convertible, with the mirrored sun glasses. You've seen the type. Often the lens in the sun glasses are put in with the mirror facing inward. This is so he can look at himself.
There are certain inevitable facts about growing older that I must concede. I could not imagine myself with a woman much younger than me.
"Dear where were you when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon?"
"I was a zygote."
Common experiences are too important.
Life is strange, when you're old enough to truly know how to have fun, you either can't do it or look ridiculous trying.
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