Well, that day is
today. When I was a kid, I had a hard time imagining being 64 or anything over
50 for that matter. I was sure I really didn’t want to ever see 64 roll around
and figured I would probably do something stupid to end it all way before then
anyhow. And trust me, I did plenty of stupid in my younger days. For instance, I went surfing
once when a hurricane was approaching the gulf coast and got slammed by my own
surfboard in the forehead in plenty deep enough water to drown in if it had
knocked me out. Fortunately, I have a very hard head. The resulting cut on my
forehead required twenty seven stitches. And on the way back from the hospital
in Galveston, my buddies were complaining because we had missed the best waves
we had ever seen in the gulf, so we stopped again and went surfing for the rest
of the day. Yep, I was out there with a big bandage on my head covering twenty
seven stitches and risking my life once again. This is Texas after all, and we’re
famous for getting back on the horse that throws us, even if it is stupid to do
so. Not too long after that, I joined Uncle Sam’s Army for four years. It was
during the height of the Viet Nam war, so I had little doubt I would get sent
there and that would be the end of it for me. Fate intervened, and I was sent
to the Republic of Panama instead. A little less dangerous than Viet Nam in
that there wasn’t an active war going on, but still, it had its risks which I
also managed to survive. But I had been so relieved to be sent to Panama
instead of Viet Nam, that I started wondering about my own bravery. Was I a
coward? I had never really been put to the test, and I couldn’t help but
wonder. You see I grew up reading comic books and the afore mentioned
romanticized action novels and sci-fi stories that caused me to have this bloated
sense of what a hero should be and what bravery looked like. So later on, when
I ended up divorced and having to cope with the life of a single man. I was
introduced to the nightlife by a friend who happened to be a bouncer at a local
nightclub. I decided this would be the perfect way to prove to myself once and
for all if I had it in me to be brave rather than cowardly. So I started
working as a bouncer too. I did this job, as a part time gig, for five years. I
was very good at it. I faced down guys much bigger than me and managed to
survive all that time. I was never once afraid, even when a guy pulled a gun
and stuck it in my side and told me to let him go. I held him until the cops
got there daring him to shoot me the whole time. I got a reputation for being
fearless and people avoided confronting me after that. So I knew I wasn’t a
coward, even if I knew I wasn’t any kind of superhero. During those same years,
I was an emotional wreck because of the breakup of my marriage. Working in the
nightclub scene made alcohol more than just available – it was a free and
endless well of forgetfulness. I dove in and attempted to drown myself in it.
That particular stupidity almost succeeded in ending my days, not once but
twice as I ended up in the hospital where my doctor told me if I didn’t quit
drinking I would die. Well stupid doesn’t always win out and here I am.
Honestly when I was
a kid, with a very vivid imagination as you might imagine, I often dreamed
about being married and what my wife would look like and be like. I was way off
on that one too. Of course I had read a few books, to say the least, by the
time I was a teenager and had some very romantic notions about love and how all
that was supposed to work. Romance is all good and fun to read about, but it
rarely works out in real life the way it does in novels. Most of those stories
are more like fairy tales than fairy tales. Real love and real life can often be
more like a tragedy than a romance. My love life was no fairy tale. But it had
its moments. I’m happy to say that I am back married again to my first wife and
the mother of my two children. So as the Beatles pondered, “Doing the garden, digging
the weeds, who could ask for more? Will you still need me, will you still feed
me, when I'm sixty-four?” Will she still love me when I’m 64? Today we find
out.
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