“When I get older losing my hair (Already lost)

Seven days from now

Will you still be sending me a valentine

Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

If I stay out ’til quarter to three

Will you lock the door?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I’m sixty-four?

You’ll be older too

And if you say the word

I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse

When your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

Sunday mornings go for a ride

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?

Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight

If it’s not too dear

We shall scrimp and save

Grandchildren on your knee

Vera, Chuck & Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line

Stating point of view

Indicate precisely what you mean to say

Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form

Mine for evermore

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I’m sixty-four?

Ho!”

With thanks to the Beatles, and noting the slight changes made to lines one, two, five, and six of this rendition performed by them, a week from today, I will be able to see if some of the answers in this little ditty will come to pass (I already know the answers to some of their questions), as next Sunday, I won’t be saying, “WHEN I’m 64,” I’ll be saying “Now that I’m 64.”

There are milestone times in our lives when we hit an age that marks a passage of time from one era of our lives to another. The passage from a “tweener” (ages 8-12 or so) to teenager (13), from teenager (13) to young adult (18 or so), a young adult (18 or so) through middle age adulthood (about 40 to 45), a middle ager (about 40/45), to a Senior Citizen or AARPer (about 60 or so and up), mark changes in many statuses in our lives, and give us certain perks when we reach those levels. Reaching 64 also allows you to reach the last year of the survey age group, (55 to 64), when completing surveys to give others ideas as to what people our age think and feel about aspects of our lives.

The sad thing about reaching this last grouping, is that you then move to age designations based on decades referring to its members as sexigenerians, septuagerarians, octagenarians, and nonagenarians, titles we can’t even spell (I had to look up a couple of the spellings), and if we are lucky enough we may reach the distinction of becoming a centenarian. And as we age (gracefully we hope), I guess the world thinks that when you reach the status of becoming mid-sexigenerians, you might want to tighten that seat belt and hang on with all you’ve got, because the ride to the end will be much faster than we ever could imagine it would be.

But as Lee Corso so emphatically tells some of the younger College Football prognosticators on ESPN’s College Football Game Day each week, when he disagrees with someone’s prediction, “Not so fast, my friend.”

Yes, I have trouble hearing some things, and yes, at times remembering why I got up to go into another room is a mystery, and yes, night driving is not as easy as it used to be, and yes, I comb my hair with a washcloth, and yes, if I wake up and something doesn’t ache somewhere I feel I got cheated that day, and yes, you can almost set your watch to my daily trips to the bathroom, but I’m nowhere near ready to say that I, and my horse, have reached our sunset.

I like to think, I still have something to offer the world. I still think fairly clearly. I am relatively healthy right now, though I have had some procedures done which have repaired a few damaged and/or broken parts. (But that goes for my car too, and some might have thought that my 2002 Jeep should have run its course way before this, but it’s still my “Rad Ride,” as someone once told me. (I did have to ask what that meant when he said it.)

A while back, someone used the expression that “40 is the new 20.” Not sure if I’d go that far, but because the life expectancy has increased in our country and our generations, I might shave at least 10 to 15 years off of that and say that maybe today’s 65 is the new 50 (oh heck, let’s make that 45). I am fortunate that I can still do things I could do when I was of a younger age. I still walk, though it’s often on a treadmill. I still bike, though it’s often on a stationary bike. As of recent times, while coaching and officiating, I could still run when I had to and could keep up with a runner hitting a triple, or could go out to the outfield to see if a ball was caught or trapped and then sprint back to home to cover the plate in case a play came back there, as part of the two man rotation scheme in our umpires mechanics, and I usually was the runner at practice when I had my players work on rundowns, and when teaching how to run the bases. (I will admit, I sometimes wished there was an oxygen tank close by in those last few scenarios.) But I did it, and still do it at my age, just maybe a step or two, or ten slower, and a little (a lot?) achier.

So going back to the Beatles song questions, Will I be getting any bottles of wine next week, or birthday greetings, or next February, a Valentine? I like wine, love getting birthday wishes, and always want to be someone’s (Sally’s) special valentine. And if I come in at a quarter to three will the door be locked? (No need to really answer that one because I can’t even stay up much past a quarter to nine, even on New Year’s Eve.)

And later questioning whether we’ll rent a cottage on an island, I hope Sally and I can spend some part of our retirement on, or near a beach, hearing the water meet the land, enjoying warm breezes, sipping those tropical drinks with the umbrellas sticking out of them, and listening to Jimmy Buffett music. There was also a line in the Beatles’ song about scrimping and saving…that’s been our whole life, so that’s no big deal. We’ve done it and we’ve survived quite nicely. And to clarify, our grandchildren are not named Vera, Chuck, and Dave, but Justin, Jeffrey, Kolby and Josh, and our Great Grandson “Little X’ Xavier.

Will I still get postcards and notes (and texts and Facebook tags) from family and friends? I do now, and I hope they will continue to come, as it’s nice when people think of you. But will people still need me, will my wife still feed me, when I’m 64? I guess I’ll start finding out next Sunday, when I’m officially threescore and four.