Another trip around the sun

On this Friday morning, as I listen to the pouring of rain and thunder rumbling in the distance, I am celebrating my birthday by writing a new column about an old subject. Me! Yep, I officially chalked up another trip around the sun, and this coming year is bound to be another wild ride. Oh, I’m not planning to do anything crazy like skydiving, swimming with sharks or switching to fruity seltzers during happy hour. Maybe when I turn 90, but not this year.

Y’all might be wonderin’ how old I am today. Well, y’all can just keep on wonderin’. It’s said that you should never ask a woman her age because she’ll just lie about it. And you shouldn’t ask an old coot how old he is because he’s probably forgotten. Oh, I know my birth date. I have to recite it to nurses at every doctor’s appointment, but don’t ask me to do the math.

Yup, I’m up in age, long in the tooth. I’m so far over the hill that I have to make several stops and rest during my descent. I’m so old that when I was born, Big Bend was called Just a Mediocre Bend. I’m not one to brag, but as a young whippersnapper, I caught a ten pound bass off the bow of Noah’s ark.

I’ve got a lot of miles on my odometer. I’ve been in the shop a time or two; I had some parts replaced and got my share of tune-ups. Most of my hinges are rusty and squeak when I move ‘em. Sure, I have my share of scratches and dents, but I can look fairly decent after a good washing. I may not speed down the freeway like I did twenty years ago, but I can still make it down the road, often belching out noxious fumes.

In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed quite a few changes. Some good, some not so good. Growing up, we didn’t have home computers, laptops or smart phones. Social media was when housewives gathered in the kitchen to spread rumors about the other neighbors. Amazon was a river in South America, and google was a term to describe funny-looking eyes.

When I was a small fry, we had phones, but they were attached to the wall. And they had dials, not push buttons. They certainly weren’t smart phones like everyone has now. We had to memorize phone numbers or know how to look up numbers in the Yellow pages. We didn’t have Siri or Alexa for answers to all our questions. Oh, we had our source for answers, and if she didn’t know, she’d say, “Go ask your father.”

Our first TV was a boxy B&W RCA with a rabbit-ear antenna. We got 3, maybe 4 channels depending on weather conditions. There was no Netflix or Hulu. Streaming was a topic of discussion with a urologist. We had no remotes, just a dad who’d say, “Clint, switch over to channel 13. Gunsmoke is coming on.”

When I was a tyke, we would play outside with other kids in the neighborhood. Games like Kick the Can, Freeze Tag and Dodgeball. Today, kids sit on the couch playing video games until their batteries die.

Over the past half century, I have listened to all sorts of music: Rock & Roll, R&B, disco and, of course, country music. I was a fan of many artists over the years: Johnny Mathis, Glen Campbell, the Eagles, the Commodores, Willie and Waylon, and of course, Jimmy Buffett. Kids today listen to a genre that I refuse to call music. Performers with strange names, often misspelled or have the word Ice tacked on, talk in rhymes. I don’t understand why my grandson would rather listen to rap music instead of my Spotify playlist, “Back to the ‘70s.”

I might be a year older, but physically, I haven’t changed much. I still have most of my hair, and even some new ones growing in strange places. My weight fluctuates like gasoline prices, but rarely over 5 pounds. Internally, there have been a few changes and some hardware added, but I’m relatively healthy. I may have many body parts of an old man, but I’m still a kid at heart.