WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE 69?

This birthday has definitely been messing with my mind. When I think about being 69, my main emotion is surprise: surprised that I lived this long, surprised that it went so fast, but most of all surprised that I’m this old. The reality of that just can’t seem to sink in.

Last week I was in the doctor’s office and I noticed an older couple. I didn’t pay much attention to them until the attendant called his name and then asked him his birth date. He was two years younger than I am!! And this happens to me all the time --- all the time!! I will see pictures of people in the obituaries (or somewhere else) and I will automatically think they look ancient and they are either my age or younger.

And how about this one? I’ll read the headline, “Elderly Couple Robbed on Church Street” or “Elderly Woman Scares off Intruder” and right away I’m thinking the couple or woman is in their eighties or nineties. And instead they might be as young as their fifties!! I may as well face it, to the rest of the world I am tagged by that hateful word, “elderly”.

It mollifies me somewhat when people are surprised to learn my age. And it happens so much that I guess I really must not look this old. One person told me last week after hearing about my birthday that I could pass for fifty. Well, that’s stretching it, but I think I will quit telling because inevitably here’s what happens: People (especially women) began to look surreptitiously at me to see if perhaps they missed something on first glance, a hidden wrinkle, or a saggy place they didn’t catch the first time.

So what I need now is to come up with some catchy phrase to answer people who ask me my age. I’m sure my faithful readers will come up with some good suggestions!