Sixty-Three

Today is my birthday. I am 63.

When I turned 60, I was a little spooked about it. 50, 40, and 30 were nothing, really, but entering my 60s was, I admit, a little scary. When you get into your 60s, people start thinking of you as old, not simply middle-aged. It's just an arbitrary point along a continuum, to be sure, but we measure our ages in integers, and 60 is a lot of integers.

That was 3 years ago. A lot has happened in 3 years. My little girl, who was just coming up on 4 then, is now coming up on 7. She is learning to play the piano and has gotten quite good at riding a two-wheeler. These are the things that make the passage of time enjoyable. Less enjoyable: the shock of finding out I have heart disease.

Yes, I Drank the Kool-Aid

I am not sure where the term "drink the Kool-Aid" came from. My guess is that it refers to the Jonestown Massacre, the mass suicide of a notorious religious cult, wherein cyanide was purportedly mixed with Kool-Aid before being administered to the victims. Of late, the term has come to mean that one has swallowed the propaganda, usually the propaganda of the Left, in expressing one's opinion of current events. It is most commonly an insult hurled by conservatives as a means of preempting a rational discourse they have no hope of winning. Conservatives are like that.

The Boondocks Have Vanished

During the mid-90's, I established a series of rides I called the "Vanishing Boondocks" series. The intent was to leave from what was then the outskirts of town for the corn and soybean fields of the triangle defined by the cities of Naperville, Oswego, and Plainfield; to ride on the low-traffic farm-to-market roads we had all come to love, and to witness the destruction of our habitat at the hands of real estate developers.

Any Change is for the Better and Other Disasters

Only 6 more days until I turn 63. My, my, where does the time go?

When I look back on my life, I see a series of choices I've made, both good and bad. Those are the things that have gotten me where I am now. Of course, I make decisions every day. And I make mistakes every day, but not all of my mistakes have been the result of bad decision making. I don't worry about those. I worry about the things I did when I should have known better.

The title says it all. I don't have much to say, but when I do, I will say it here.