Growing Older Faster Than Growing Up

Growing Older Faster Than Growing Up

Not to steal Jimmy Buffet’s line, but I am growing older faster than I am growing up. Growing up means assuming the mantle of one’s age and acting like, well, a grownup. I want to act my age but that would mean I would have to act like a 63-year-old, and that is just not going to happen-yet.

If I were going to act as though I were 63, I would have told Lito to shove his construction project instead of going on over to serve as sawyer for the rafters. I am an excellent sawyer and know exactly how much shy to cut a board, if I am given a measurement of 71-and-a-half inches, light.

I also know precisely how much a c**t-hair is (one thirty-second of an inch), when instructed to remove that amount from a board which has already been sent up on the roof. In last Thursday’s gig there were no returns from the roof because, let’s face it, it’s just not that much fun to convince twenty-foot-long, two-by-ten-inch, green Douglas fir rafters to assume their position on the roof and then return to the ground.

Put another way, they come down a lot faster than they go up, if we are not careful. Laugh out loud. Silly me, I said “we.”

I do not do rafters. I cut them-I don’t actually do the moving. So in this instance, I can act my age.

If I were really 63, wouldn’t I rock a crewcut and a neatly trimmed, bristly mustache, with a three-day growth of white whiskers, instead of a musteard, my two braids which extend down from my chin, a foot or so? I mean, how juvenile can one get?

Actually, I’m not sure I should say this, but I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

I have always said that I wish to age gracefully, but in lieu of that, I will settle for aging memorably. Instead of retiring to my front porch in a rocking chair, I will chain that rocking chair to the front end of somebody’s 4-wheel-drive vehicle, so I can still go where the action is.

With me in the chair or inside the vehicle, whichever suits my mood.

I waited until this summer to go to Reggae on the River, so now I must make up for lost time. I am going to Hawaii with Annie this coming February, in an effort to gather as many of my siblings together in one place as possible. 

I am not responsible for getting the whole thing organized, but I am sure going to take advantage of the opportunity to go on a real vacation, something that has never been very high on my list of goals and objectives.

I started wearing sandals a few summers ago, but took a huge stride forward this summer: I ditched the socks...

Everyone ought to have something he or she does well that can be presented to the world. I emerged from a 48-year-long mental morass of confusion in 2010 and I no longer have any fear of making a fool of myself. 

In fact, World, I am getting pretty good at it.