What you are is where you were when

What about you?

How old are you? Not what the calendar says, I mean how old are you really? Are you middle aged? What is that?

In another month I’ll be 56. It must be how old I am because I was born in 1950. It’s easy to figure out. When I was ten I would run a little math problem for my self, trying to see if I would live till the year 2000. My mathematically challenged brain calculated that I would have to be 50 years old to do it. That seemed attainable, though I could not conceive of what it would like to be 50.

Sometimes I think I’ve never gone much past 19. Or maybe 22. Those ideals held, dreams dreamt, things unknown. Feelings felt, thoughts thought, people loved. Stuff learned, attitudes hardened, naiveté in place.

I wonder if I’ve ever learned anything else since. Of course in the intervening years I’ve collected two masters degrees and twenty years experience in career counseling so I must have picked up something, right? But not anything that really matters. Everything worth learning had to happen by 22. Or so it seems.

There is a set of things I learned through work experience and life experience, but my ability to cram those things into my brain and make them part of who I am seems to have been determined a long time ago. Examples:

1) There were never better baseball teams than the New York Yankees in the 1950’s.
2) There were never better home run hitters than Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (but I always rooted more for Mantle, as I recall).
3) The best kisser in the world is my Kathy. I discovered this at age 19.
4) The prettiest girl in the world is my daughter Ann. I discovered this at age 22.
5) The most romantic movie ever made was Franco Zefferili’s treatment of “Romeo and Juliet” How old was I? 18.
6) The best math teacher I would ever meet was Mr. Wallace. I knew this at 15.
7) The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with was Kathy. I was 19.

Hey—you have your own list, I’m sure. You may disagree with mine, but you can’t have Kathy.

Oh sure I suppose I’ve learned some other things along the way, but such ideas as the items on my list are bound like opioids to neural receptors in my brain. They are locked in and seem to affect my capacity to take in new concepts. Anything new has to be compatible with what I already “know” to be true.

For instance, rock music, blues and even country are good things. I discovered this at 14. Therefore, any means that brings that music to me is fine. Hence, iPods are wonderful inventions. I won’t insist that vinyl is the only way to go.

Here is another: All people deserve to be treated respectfully until they show themselves as unworthy of that regard and even then, you can graciously disengage with them. I started learning that at about age 5. I’m always willing to give someone another chance. And another. Like my father told me when I was 17, “The old wheel goes ‘round—you never know who you’ll meet again.” I was burning with adolescent outrage, but his wisdom has soothed me since.

Now if only my knees would go along with the idea that I’m still 22.