Da Beeg Five-Oh....

One half of a century.  

As my man Ben Stein might say, ”Woooow.”

A fifty year old person has clear recollection of when all but the largest of cities “rolled up their sidewalks” by 10 pm on weekdays and midnight on Saturdays, with Sunday actually being a nationwide day of rest, save for hospitals, police & fire, and a selection of restaurants.

Fifty year olds also can clearly remember only four to six channels on television, “SenSurround Sound” in movie theatres, AM Top Forty and FM Underground on the radio - complete with Wolman Jack hopping back and forth between both frequencies - and that rare luxury known as a “party line” on the good ol’ telephone.  

Men landing and walking on the Moon, “portable” telephones, 24-7/365 commerce, video games, basic cable TV, and this Interwide Web-thingy {among many, MANY other things} were all far in the future, when the fifty year old in question was still a youth.

And I ought to know - ‘cos I AM that fifty year old in question!!

That’s right, Fellow Babies - this modest and humble drummer is about to plunge headfirst into my sixth decade with a clear head, reasonably sharp focus, somewhat-healed heart, and all guns still a-blazin’ as usual.    The ride so far has been nothing short of utterly typical - the ups and the downs tend to cancel each other out over the long haul, despite whatever perspective I might have on a day-to-day basis in the trenches.

Death of a loved one; a nearly insatiable hunger for travel; a desire to be ones’ own boss; health issues; financial hassles; political guerrila warfare; familial drama and upheaval; the odd spiritual quest or three; a taste of ones’ own mortality - you name it, I’ve “been there, done that,” and then some.  But again, I must stress that my situation is way more typical than unique - anyone who can’t concoct a large laundry list of personal experiences after fifty years of life is either brain-dead, or at the very least severely challenged in the mental department.

“Older but wiser.”  

Clich`e it ain’t, Cats and Kitties.  It’s simply the natural order of things - the kicker comes from whether or not we decide to dump a pallet of monkey-wrenches into the machinery, just to see what might happen.  Myself, I’m going to continue to do my damnedest to avoid such a scenario; as such, don’t expect future blogs about an asinine “midlife crisis,” or whatever.  I’m perfectly peaceful about what has gone before, and I’m firmly focused on the future.  IMHO, to do otherwise would simply be a waste of time, and would play right into Old Nick’s cloven “hands,” dig?  

I mean, how the hell can one call some personal fluxtime a “midlife crisis,” when not a single one of us know for sure how long or short our lives will be in the first place?  Doesn’t it make more practical sense to continually double down, rather than dwell on this or that heartache to the nth degree?

Y’all know the answer just as well as I do - “Older, but wiser.”

And that will just about do it for now, Boys and Girls.  The bottom line is that age fifty is whatever the hell I choose to make of it, and I hope to post updates about it here with a touch more frequency than my posts from 2017, God willing.  

So sit tight, fire up a pitcher of Colortinis, and ride the groove with me, if you will.  I dig the company, y’know?

More shortly……...