who needs to get old?

​AN ESSAY ON RETIREMENT – OR BETTER STILL, AVOIDING IT
The days fly by, so much to do, so much not done.
Am I the only one? In demand, wanted, sought after?
Why, am I the only person on this planet who can do all the things that people want me to?
Maybe..!
Maybe everyone else has given up, retired, hung up their figurative boots?
Or am I just one of those inquisitive people with a brain going a thousand to the dozen?
My friends who have had great careers, many of them rely on me and yet I’m older than some of them. A block of land here, a hotel opportunity there, a new website that we could start, let’s do something disruptive and be the next Uber of the {insert one} industry?
Why? Why me? Why Not?
I mean, who doesn’t like great ideas and being made to feel important?
When asked what my next career was going to be, I had to answer carefully – real estate is a thing, selling T-shirts – managing a teenage rock bank, yep, seems to be a good market out there, selling anything online, just need to put some time in  and build a few more websites, well, you can never have too many and I still haven’t learned Wordpress, yet – what is wrong with me? Where did I go wrong in my 66 obviously blinkered limited years?
Remember Year 2K – that catastrophe that never actually happened – well, I woke up next day on the number 1 day of the new millennium, and said – well that was fun, and now we are here, in C21…business as usual, but nonetheless exciting.
Fridge is still working, no major viruses infecting my computer, all the ships out on the ocean apparently still plodding along and no crisis in weather, governance or all the other million and one things that we thought would end the world, as  we knew it.
Anyone remember that? You could be forgiven for having completely forgotten one of the biggest non-events in the history of the world.
Moon still spinning around the earth – earth still spinning around the sun – sun still spinning around …you get my drift – apparently there are whole solar systems out there that dwarf ours millions of times over – I mean, where will it end? All this knowledge and learning. When will the human race finally be able to say, at last we know all there is to know?
There is that apocryphal story that went around that, in 1911, one of the US Congressmen moved a vote that the US Patent Office should be closed down, because .. “everything worthwhile has already been invented..!”
1984 came and went – George Orwell is more or less kind of forgotten, now.
I have to tell you that, for many of my friends, it will be another 20 years until they finally come kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.
Most of them still don’t know how to read their email every day.
Say what!!??
I actually believe that most of my friends think that they are writing more and more every day, because they are commenting on Facebook. I mean, how many times can a woman use the word “gorgeous” in relation to babies, puppies, cats, dogs and other irrelevant creatures in the world.
Can someone please say something original on Facebook? Please? Pretty Please?
The most abused word on Facebook – “goooor gee ussss”!! Pa-lease, get a new superlative will ya’s?
Think of some of the most expressive words in our lexicon..
These are the ones that I personally love, because they are so expressive and descriptive:

• Exuberance! – love and plenty bursting out of a cake!
• Exhilaration – satisfaction on a stick, and on steroids!
• Magnificent – the crux of the crux
• Abundance – overflowing good things in spades
• Exhilarating – feel the slipstream pushing you along on that magic ride
• Bewildering – the state of constant perplexion

Getting older is one thing but getting old is quite another.
From the age of zero we are getting older, but from the age of (bugger, I can feel that pain).. is getting old – so what – just a state of mind – as long as that mind stays young so will you and I.
Atrophy - now that could be included in those favourite words above, but it’s not – it’s a shitty word, and therefore not allowed into the lexicon – no room for it in my vocabulary.
Bugger that.   No time for that type of negativity.
So, here I stand, (or lean, supported by a bit of furniture, as the case may be) – still believing that I will get my golf handicap down, despite probably never being able to darken the doorsteps of any more golf clubs, ever again.
A 25 year old mind, irrevocably trapped inside a 66 year old body (when I read this in 45 years time, I will probably snigger and say ..”young upstart – what was he thinking?..”).
Mind is willing, legs are weak, probably never will get the call up from the Wallabies, but I’ll leave my boots in the boot, just in case.
We are the Baby Boomer generation, a mob of people that actually believes that they will live to be 100, because they all have a bit of super, they need to get it spent, without giving it to their lazy, layabout, Gen X etc kids, and they (we) all think that they (we) are bullet-proof.
Personally, I get by by not looking in the mirror too much. That could end up being depressing, especially if my hair eventually falls out, which happily hasn’t happened yet.
When I do look in the mirror, I first give myself a good pep-talk and then realise that my advice was never going to be taken seriously so then I give myself the finger, break into a laugh, and life goes on.
You wouldn’t be dead for quids!
Especially, with my two magnificent teenagers, who keep us young and on our toes, every day of the week.
Q:           How much shit can an old fart like me absorb?
A:            As much as it takes, while being pilloried for dad jokes etc – just keep shelling out the bucks, John and you’ll be fine .. !
Love them to death and plan to be around for many milestones to come – when my beautiful, magnificent little bubba leaves secondary school, I will have had 35 consecutive years of paying private school fees, and I would not have it any other way. That’s like giving away 2 houses.
But you know what, as we all know as parents, when they get to that stage of being somewhere between 14 and 17 and they have their individual “lightbulb moment” – which they do, it is a feeling that, first comes on slowly and then the realisation fills you with a kind of warmth that  you cannot describe to anyone who is not a parent. You know that they are through the worst of that hazy pubescent period and on the way to finishing their adolescence and moving into sensible young adulthood. Now we just have to teach them to be safe drivers! A new world opens up, dammit!
Exuberance!! Exhilaration!! Heaven on a Stick!
…  and satisfaction – another word that we can add to the lexicon.
Watch this space for the next instalment.