My Birthday Tribute to Myself, Age 71

It’s my birthday today. I am 71. My wife thinks that‘s not so old. I think it is. Let’s put it in terms everyone can understand. Where I’ve been, who and what I’ve seen and done.

Not up to this honestly. It’s all really huge or just lists… forget about it.

Battlefields: Valley Forge, the Battle of Trenton, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness (including the deathbed of Stonewall), Ford‘s Theater, the Cemeteries of Normandy, the dedication at Wright-Pat of my Dad’s 12th Air Force Fighter Group (including my Dad’s P-47), the Revolutionary War Skirmish at Quinton’s Bridge, where my home town saved the day by protecting Mad Anthony Wayne from the Queen’s Rangers. I organized the reenactment.

Places I’ve been: [Never mind. You’d break your thumbs in the scrolling.]

Things I’ve driven: [Too long a list. You wouldn’t believe it anyway.]

Celebrity Sightings: five Stones concerts, Frank Sinatra on the lawn in Cincinnati. Tom Waits at the Academy of Music, Cats and Phantom on Broadway. And the people I’ve seen: Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Jack Lemmon, Gloria  Steinem, James Stewart, Julia Child, and, as I was moving away in a taxicab, through the window, Isaac Asimov, the very day I sold The  Boomer Bible.



There are empty seats I never saw years ago. Same 
empty seats I hear every day now when I write too.

Some sort of Stones ‘24 concert video. Unlike any I ever witnessed at five stadium events since 1975. Haven’t followed them for several years now. Can’t believe they still want to tour. Even I know when it’s time to hang it up and play wise instead of hip.

We’re all just skulls covered by mummy skin now.

Is there anything left of me? Old age is either a time of personal doubt or utter panic.

If there’s a heaven I believe I got an in by writing The Boomer Bible and other things. 

As I’ve done in recent years, here’s my bathroom selfie setting a date for my latest Dorian Gray accounting. Still looking down at the iPhone but you’ll see that unlike Jagger, I still have my own hair on my head. You can always tell who doesn’t. They always have too much.

Mug shot at 71 years old. Unretouched.

Dorian Gray. An Oscar Wilde confection. Eternal youth on the face of it while time and sin do their dirty work on a hidden portrait. Grew up in an age when so many kids chanted the mantra, “Live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse.” 




Why I stopped even trying to write this post.









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