Remember when Peter Pan enthralled a generation of baby boomers with “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” in the 1950’s and 60’s? Well, I’m still living the dream. Here I am in my mid fifties’ (okay, late fifties) and I still act the way I did thirty years ago. Immature you say? Nah, just a free spirit with a blend of impishness to go.
As I get older, younger people look at me and think of me as cranky. It’s like the average middle class guy who does weird things and people call him crazy. He wins the lottery and then all of a sudden he is called eccentric. I’m cranky because I have developed a lifetime of piques and interests and don’t care if other people share them or not. When I do what I want to do, act as I please, all of a sudden I am cranky. If I went in the other direction and just tried to please everyone but myself, they would say I have low self-esteem. Hey, esteem comes out of a radiator (sorry). It’s like that old song, “I do something to me, something that really mystifies me.” Okay, that’s not exactly how it goes, but I sounds it better. It’s like the schizophrenic who walks out of a psychiatrist’s office singing, “I gotta be me, and me, I gotta be me, and me.”
My personality is the same and so is my voice since my youth. Okay, maybe a little lower on the scale. But anyone who knew me thirty years ago could be blindfolded, hear me speak and pick me out of a police lineup.
My choice of music is the same from long ago, the same with the type of movies that interests me. My politics, though, have change. That comes with wisdom, the little that I have acquired. As a young man- geesh, that thought alone is hard to digest. After all, to a 95 year old, I am a young man. Anyway, as a young man, I tended to be more liberal- ooh, it hurts to use that word. I looked at the world through rose-colored glasses. I even wore that type of tinted, somewhat aviator style eyewear for a while. I was idealistic. You can guess the political party I mostly sided with. As I got older and found life’s challenges thrown at me by other people was not always fair, I switched allegiance and began to see things differently. Like that song, “I look at life from both sides now.” (Of course, I think that song meant something else, not that there is anything wrong with it….)
I wonder what I am going to be like twenty years from now. Am I going to be mimicking those two old guys who sat in the balcony on the Muppets Show?. As it is now, my barber trims more hair off my eyebrows and ears than the other parts of my head. Will I relish having a young fifty year old get up and give me her seat? Will I be in panic mode waiting for the third or fourth of the month to come when the automatic Social Security benefit is put into my bank account? Will I be in a quandary wondering whether I took the pill or pills I was supposed to take on Monday on Sunday instead? It goes on and on.
I live in an area that experiences a normal winter of snow and bitter cold weather for a possible three month period. Am I better off when I am old living in a warmer climate but giving up nearby family and friends? Or will my so-called friends be dead by then, so who cares?
Look, I said I like being cranky.