BIRTHDAY

I’ll admit I’m having a birthday later this week. No gifts, please. I’m OK with getting older these days. I still make a big ridiculous ruckus about it to people like I really do care, but it’s just to throw them off kilter - I’ve actually come to terms with it.

The only thing is - it happens to you a lot earlier than you think it will - getting older, I mean. I’m discovering there are actually a lot of positive things about it. I’ll write a blog about that when I think of what they are.

I know this ... my sleep schedule has changed. I’m waking up these days at least by 6 a.m. unassisted. I never used to do that. Time was I could sleep till noon with the neighbor jackhammering his driveway and I'd ‘zzzzz’ right thru it. Not now. I don’t even need to set an alarm as long as I don’t want to get up before sunrise.

My diet has changed as well. When I was 22, the word ‘diet’ was a word people who wanted to lose weight used. He wanted to be thinner so he’d go on a diet. She wanted to fit in her summer swimming suit so she’d go on a diet. My young metabolism was a beauty to behold, so I never thought much about diet. I’m the guy who would eat seven HoHos followed by a small bag of Oreos topped off with three S’Mores - before breakfast. My grandmother used to make me a nightly 9 p.m. chocolate shake just before bed and I’d sleep like a baby - till noon the next day - and wake up as skinny as the day before. A diet is what overweight people went on.

These days ‘diet’ refers to every last morsel I let past my lips. I have to eat right and work out just to break even. I confess I made a whole sermon out of eating ten tacos at one sitting last year, but it was all for show - even though I really did do it. But I lost my lunch two days later.

When I was younger, ‘joint’ was the place down the street that I wasn’t supposed to ever go into - flim flam types frequented ‘joints.’ Fifteen years later, ‘joints’ were something completely different. People rolled them. Today, I’m realizing I actually have joints. When I wake up in the morning - by sunrise - some days I think, ‘Wow, it can’t be that thing I did yesterday. I’ve been doing that for years, so it can’t be that.’ There’s a grimace in your joints. As D. O'Brien says: 'Your joints used to be your friend, but now they’ve turned against you. Twenty years ago if I told my doctor that I had a sharp pain he’d say: ‘We’d better see what that’s about and do something to fix that.’ Now he says: ‘Well, that’s just life.’

So I’m having a birthday this coming week. Kind of proud of it. Yep. Don’t really care. Don’t care that I’m getting a little older. Not at all. Not one bit. I’m going to bed now. Sunrise come early.

And be blessed.