The Seven-Decade Itch

My birthday is coming up soon. Or is it? It may already have passed. Who knows? Not you.

The reason I’m being so abstruse is, I wish to avoid spending a lot of time acknowledging the tsunami of well-wishes from my myriad of fans. Or, more likely, having the reality that I do not actually have a myriad of fans impressed upon me.

Suffice it to say that, at some point during the cold and snowy January of 1955, the Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, New York, was privileged to welcome me into the world.

That, for those of you struggling with the math, puts me at 69 years old.

And that’s my problem: 69. Salacious connotations aside (get your minds out of the gutter) it’s such a nowhere age. It’s bumpy and awkward and takes me out of the vibrant, sixty-is-the-new-forty decade, and presses me firmly against my septuagenarian years, but does not actually push me into them.

So, I’m on a cusp, with nothing to look forward to but getting older. And no one wants to be seventy, not even the energetic, seventy-is-the-new-fifty type of septuagenarians. Given the option, they’d rather be fifty. Or forty. Or thirty.

Strange, but I don’t recall having this sort of angst when entering my sixties. I had a look back at my Journal and it doesn’t even rate a mention. Looking back further, I find I had more of an existential crisis when I approached my forties, fearing life would pass me by before I got to all those things I always thought I’d have time to get to but had not. This led to my taking up SCUBA, becoming an Irish Step Dancer, learning to play the bagpipes, and, ultimately, completely changing my life.

I can’t say I currently feel like that. Although I do see good things ahead—I have finally won my scuffle with the bagpipes and already have another booking to play them in public, my decade-long detour into The Talisman series is coming to an end, and my singing is beginning to expand into heretofore untried venues—I do not have a hankering to trek to the South Pole, take up bungee jumping, or attempt hang-gliding. I’m merely sorrier than I thought I would be at seeing my sixties come to an end, so I decided to be proactive and meet this challenge head-on.

And so, on my current birthday—whenever that might be (or might have been)—I am adopting the pretence that I have turned seventy.

This way, I have a full year to get used to being in my seventies, and I can avoid the bumpy and awkward age of 69. And, when I really do turn seventy, I don’t need to increment my age, as I will already be seventy.

It’s a win-win situation, to my thinking. To my wife’s, however, it’s confirmation that, the older I get, the further I stray off the rails.

But, whichever line of thinking you decide to follow:

Happy Birthday to me