IT'S JUST A NUMBER !?

       In a few days I will arrive at one of those 'milestone birthdays'...75 !  There was a time when that would have sounded, what ?...Ancient, Decrepit, OLD .  No longer .
All kinds of cliches come to mind: e.g., 'how did this happen so fast'?  A danger is to want to pontificate, to say something 'profound' about 'lessons I have learned', or 'sage sayings for those younger'.  Actually, I hope I have none of that. I am still trying to 'take it in', to assimilate some of what it means.
     Fifty was not traumatic.  Even gave myself a party, a gathering of friends that I called 'The Old Fogies Fitness Festival and Fun Run'.  A few of us managed to run a 10k.
My 60th  was on a Sunday and my three congregations each sang "Happy Birthday" after my Intern told them that it was the day; My 65th was a memorable one that will go unspecified here;  on my 70th, I went riding down the Interstate with my daughter in a Mercedes convertible with the top down. This one is , well, 'different' and still not sure about what all that means , as said above. (Guess I could say that one of the prerogatives of 'aging' is being able to be repetitive).
     Humor seems to help.  I think it was James Thurber who said that if years had 15 months rather than 12, he would be turning 60 instead of 75. ( When I told my daughter that, she 
wrote, "Sometimes I worry about you."  )  And I think it was Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary who said that his physician told him that he had the proverbial good news/ bad news: The bad news: you are dyslexic; the good news: you are 47.  That's it: I'm 57.
    Giving people a birth certificate and saying you are now X years old and here are the age-appropriate behaviors is a tad restrictive. My office is on the third floor of an elevator-less house.  Sometimes I forget to be 'dignified' when bounding up the stairs. Several years ago, when I was 66, I was at the U-turn of a flight of stairs when I overheard the woman at the top of the steps muttering to herself: "These steps bother me; these steps frighten me; I had better hold on to the railing; these steps are not for old people."  My curiosity caused me to inquire: "How 'old' is old?" She said, "Fifty-eight".  Attempting some humor, I said, "I'm 66 and I run up and down these steps all the time."  She almost spat back, "That's the difference...you do it all the time." I realized that I didnot know her or her story, so I made no reply.  But she had just told me that I was OLD and I disagreed.
     Some gerontologists maintain that there are three progressions of 'old' in society: The young old who are 65-74; next are the old, old who are 75-84; and the oldest old who are 85 and above.  Mark Twain wrote that there are lies, damn lies and statistics.  I am not in denial of my numbers, but I am in resistance to being made a statistical category.
   Today I received a YouTube clip of a woman in California who just had her driver's license renewed on her 105 birthday.
Talk about 'age-inappropriate' behavior ! 
     I need to ponder further this milestone, but for now, here again is Satchel Paige's profound inquiry: "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"
    
          Satchel