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Show Don't Call Me Old l"' s ";'.'-' J It- , I ! . i ' ' ! '. i ! I I V - muni -' i- in -mil I I I I I I J tively short. I have my religious convictions, and those seem to solidify as I get older. I lift heavy objects by balancing bal-ancing instead of sheer muscle, but that is mostly because . all my muscle was sheared. I don't know anything more about rearing rear-ing children than I did before I got them, except I am darn good at making bottles and burping babies. I know to pay tithing and taxes first, then bills, and then buy a perennial or two for my garden, and that brushing one's teeth is not really as extracurricular extracur-ricular as the film strip led me to believe. A few more things I would like to have passed on, in no particular order. I would like my kids to have learned a few useful things just by living with me. Things like... Put grampa's stuff away, and then teach your kids to put grampa's stuff away unless you want to keep buying stuff. It's best not to put much stock in what people say. Everyone talks. What they do and who they are is much more important. impor-tant. You can't rescue anyone who doesn't want to be rescued. Referencing "Saturday Night Fever" is lost on the young. Whether it's Chef Jacques Pepin in New York City, or Chef Boyardee in the kitchen, time spent with those you love is yummy. Old is relative. Don't base the worth of someone old on whether or not they can program pro-gram their own phone. Most of all, age has taught me not to go too fast, that being kind to people is something that matters more than having to be right, and that the skills you develop de-velop while apologizing to people peo-ple will never be time wasted. Everything else is secondary. Now, let's warm up a can of mini-ravioli, I'll go get my teeth, and we'll boogie to the BeeGees. by Davison Cheney I am older than I had an- ticipated I ever would be when I was in high school, where I was i young, beautiful and wore a size i 32 swimsuit. : Frankly, other than the ! young, beautiful and size 32 j thing, I find that I don't care j about aging as much as I thought I would. ! Don't get me wrong ag- ; ing bodies are for the birds. Be- ' lieve me, there was a time when j. it didn't take me the entire Walk- ' ing Dead commercial break to i bend over and retrieve a baby I pacifier from under the couch. No, what I mean is that because be-cause I am old, there are things about which I would no longer j give a hoot. ! Not incidentally, I made a j deal with my sister years ago j that if I ever wore black socks with anything, she would help I me buy the farm. For her part, j the catalyst was hair dye; If I I ever saw her with roots half an I inch or longer, I would do the j same for her. ! Now that both of these ! happen on a regular basis, we I should follow through with our I pledge and send each other to our collective maker, but neither one of us cares! Priorities have changed. Nor do I care that I either wear, or in turn don't wear, the most stylish of clothing. If it was good for the golden age of disco for getting down in funky town then it is good for generation pants-on-the-ground. I was the guy who turned up the collar of his Lacoste Polo shirt. It was just the right shade of pink, which complemented my stylin' "burn-the-epidermis-right-off-my-body" tan. Skin cancer? I'll be dead waaaay before that, the young me thought, so pass the Hawaiian Ha-waiian Tropic oil and play that funky music, white boy. In my defense, I was a moron. What I know now that I didn't know then a primer for those who are aging or thinking think-ing about aging, or not thinking about aging but doing it anyway. any-way. Now that I am five-ish years shy from ordering from the senior menu at Denny's, I can't think of much in the way of advice for anyone, but I would like to go back in time and smack some sense into me at age 22. If I recall, I thought I knew just about everything then. I knew what my signature would look like when I was asked for an autograph. And I knew there would always be money. (Pause for hysterical laughter.) Currently, the list of things I know for certain is rela- |