At my age days rush past like angry clouds on a stormy day, sometimes spitting down pain, other times
only threatening. During my long nights of fractured slumber, they remind me there is one fewer to
come, and each will arrive and depart more rapidly than the last. Every moment is a testament to my
grip loosening, never tightening, and my most strenuous efforts only tilting the slope slightly more
horizontal. The decline is ever present and will prevail.
But I remember when days floated by unhurriedly, like driftwood on a lazy river. When I could lie in the grass and gaze at the sky for hours, inhaling the pure joy of sunshine, impatiently waiting for it to darken so the magic flies that flashed in the night could awaken. Dreaming, yearning I could speed up the clock that never turned quickly enough. Every day I was stronger, faster and smarter, and each moment screamed at my soul to expand beyond all my known boundaries. There were no endings, only beginnings. I was ascending, and that was all I had ever known.
High school was when life, which before had been filled only with a profusion of tantalizing possibilities, began to show its menace. Limitations, shortcomings, all the torments which were to keep me, and my classmates, bound through adulthood were exposed, despite the still unshaken belief in our invincibility. There was only one starting quarterback or homecoming queen. Acne didn’t care if it wrecked your popularity. Body parts did not fit together the way you’d hoped when you were younger and looking at magazines. Harvard only admitted so many students. Hell, the local state college had its limits too. Missing a period meant the rhythm method didn’t work. The best looking, most popular, people on campus were more likely to laugh at you, or even worse pity you, than include you. If you happened to be one of those great looking, popular people, you lived in constant fear of the shallowness and emptiness of your status being exposed.
But lessons are called lessons because they need to be learned. We don’t believe them until we’ve
experienced them, directly or by proxy. Those lessons form the basis of the rules we live our adult lives by, whether they teach us truth or delusion. The best rule, however, is to be lucky, and those of us of a certain age know we are as lucky as lottery winners to be alive to read this, and we remember the stories of the many who weren’t and aren’t still around to tell them themselves.
So please allow me to share my favorite salve for the bleak situation in which we exist, a sense of
humor. We all need to laugh, especially at ourselves. Laughter opens our hearts, deepens our breath,
lowers our blood pressure, and soothes our souls. Just don’t read it while you’re eating, as I will not be responsible for any throat injuries caused by 77 RULES.
That’s right! I finished it!! Its available on Amazon and Kindle right now!!! Just click the link below and order away!!!! Tell your friends, family, and neighbors!!!! Tell your enemies to read it while eating a ham sandwich!!! Tell strangers!! Tell that Hollywood star you are stalking!
