Getting "Old"

There's no way around it.  I am getting old.  When I was a kid, I thought people my current age would soon drop off and die at any moment.  I don't have a problem with getting old.  In fact, enjoy it.  Well, I enjoy most of it.

I just finished up a month-long odyssey of getting contacts/glasses for the "first" time in my life.  (I actually had reading glasses during my college years because I spent so much time studying in the library.  No really, I did.)  I didn't realize how lucky I was.  All three of my siblings got glasses when they were just kids and my parents wore them for years too.  I wanted to find contacts I could wear on the news set and when I play sports, but I also knew I'd need glasses.  

I was somewhat naive thinking the contacts/glasses would be just the same as my previous 20-20 vision with naked eyes.  Distance contacts allowed me to see distant mountain peaks with clarity, but my hands in front of me were fuzzy.  I tried three different kinds of multi-focal contact lenses in one eye with distance contacts in the other, but couldn't seem to focus on anything.  My best combination ended up being a distance contact in my right eye while putting nothing in my left.  That allows me to see the prompter and the scripts on the news desk.  My glasses are blended bifocals which are kind of funky, but I'm still getting used to them.  The funny thing is when I work at my desk on the computer, I still don't wear contacts or glasses.  Making adjustments is just part of getting old I guess.      

I did get some interesting comments from friends when I showed up on air wearing glasses for the first time.  "You look smarter."  "You look more dignified."  "You look more distinguished."  My personal favorite was "you look more believable."  Hey thanks...uh...wait a minute!  All nice compliments, but then again, if I now look more dignified, distinguished and believable, what does that mean for how I looked before.  Hmmm...

Another sign of getting "old" happens every time I get my haircut.  The funny thing is the hair that falls on the floor looks dark, but the hair remaining on my heads looks lighter and lighter.  How is that possible?

There are definitely some benefits of getting old.  I enjoy aging with my wife, who doesn't seem to show it.  I enjoy watching my children grow and learn.  I also enjoy "playing" with them.  I know I'm not getting too old because they continually say things to me like "Dad, why don't you act your age?" or "Gosh, why don't you grow up?"  I'll take those as compliments. 

Luckily, I have had a very healthy life and remain quite active.  A year in my life is not divided up by "four seasons," but by multiple seasons.  There's hunting season, hockey season, basketball season, hiking season, unicycling season, softball season, canoeing season, fly fishing season, floating the river season, etc.  Maybe staying active helps keep me "young."  A couple of years back, four of my hockey teammates (members of the local Missoula Maulers junior hockey team who I could rarely keep up with) were about a third of my age.  I had a rec league hockey teammate recently tell me he thought I was ten years younger than I am.  I'll definitely take that as a compliment.     

So yeah, I don't have a problem getting old but perhaps Mark Twain said it best:  "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."  I couldn't agree more.