Spin

Both of my kids are now in their mid-thirties. Mid-thirties! That must mean that I am getting old as I didn't become a parent until I was thirty. Oh it feels like it sometimes when my body grumbles about past abuses but I still think middle-aged. I see job postings in the paper and say, "I could do that", or maybe I'll go to Fort Macmurray and make a stake. I could but I look old to young people.

I remember working on the expansion of the Vancouver Airport in 1975, when I was 30, and my partner was the father of a kid I went to school with. He was probably in his fifties but he looked old. And I ended up doing the work while he harassed the steel workers, truck drivers, labourers or anybody else that came within 100 feet of us. I remember thinking that I didn't want to be in construction when I got to be that old.

I developed a lot of skills while working to older age - build a house or boat, rebuild a motor, run a milling machine, weld, fabricate machinery. Electrical - not shocking. Plumbing - it all ran downhill. In short, by the time I was in my forties, I could do anything. Now that I look old, the list of things that I can no longer do is growing.
It's mainly the lack of strength and stamina that is the limiting factor.

Looking older doesn't really bother me - I would chose this over how I looked as a teen. Wrinkles and lack of hair adds a certain reality to one's features; a character to the face; experiences lived. I've lost count of the accumulated scars, having gotten the first really serious one at age four. I suppose I'm not finished with scars yet; they seem to come at the unlikeliest time.

It's funny how relative age is. When I was in my twenties and thirties, elderly was over 60. Now that I'm past my mid-sixties, elderly is still twenty-something years away. Even the women that I "visually appraise" are age appropriate. I suppose my looking old coincides with feeling old when I see a ball cap on sideways or pants at the bottom of a bum. It still looks dumb. And don't get me started on rap.

Accumulated age also is apparent when I can spot a '39 Chevy but not a 2000-something Honda Civic. The '60s muscle cars still look great with real chrome bumpers and heavy iron for engines instead of plastic and aluminum. Rear wheel drive and drifting around corners instead of front-wheel drive and tame cornering. Oh, I like the technology today - I can't remember the last time I replaced spark plugs except in the lawn mower.

What is really tiresome, though, is that everything has spin. Politics especially. Nobody means what they say or say what they mean. And there appears no shame to it. I suppose if that is all that you have ever known, it doesn't stand out but those of us past a certain age can remember hand-shake deals; a man was good as his word; his word is his bond; you know - no spin. Yep. Today, everybody has spin. That's when I start to feel as old as I look.