Maybe I should explain.
I am at what we euphemistically call the leading edge of the baby boomers.
For all you Gen X, Y, Z and Q people, that's someone who was born between 1946 and 1964.
(I don't have to tell the Boomers that because they already know!)
What this means is that we boomers are at an age where all those little aches and pains start to become BIG aches and pains.
I am even starting to appreciate the saying I heard not too long ago; "Getting old is not for sissy's!"
So, the last thirty years seems like it's only been about 10 or 15, and I keep wondering where the missing time went.
I mean, I was there for it, so why does it disappear, or shrink, or fade. or something?
Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle............. I slept for twenty years!
(Hey, I just had an epiphany.... maybe that's why the book was written. Washington Irvine was lamenting the demise of his youth and wondered where it went!)
If you're not familiar with the book I will give you a brief summation here!
The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of Dutch descent, lives in a nice village at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains.You notice that Rip lost twenty years of his life too?
An amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife.
One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains.
After encountering strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, who are playing skittles sportnine-pins, and after drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep.
He wakes up twenty years later and returns to his village.
He finds out that his wife has died and his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else.
He immediately gets into trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place.
An old local recognizes him, however, and Rip's now grown daughter puts him up.
As Rip resumes his habit of idleness in the village, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, certain hen-pecked husbands especially wish they shared Rip's luck.
Must be a common occurrence for men as we grow older!
So................, here I sit on the upper edge of middle age and look at old age approaching from the horizon, and all the while I have a sense of missing a few years.
(Maybe that's why old guys are always acting so strange? They revert back to the same thing as teenagers.... they don't act "age appropriate!")
The scary part is that the older they get, the worse they act!
Women, on the other hand, seem to accept the aging process with a little more grace and class than the average male does.
But, just the same, whenever I look at some broad my own age I keep thinking they look like my mother!
Jeez!
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On the subject of the missing years, I sometimes have a thought that every time we go to sleep, when we wake up, we are in a different period of our life!
Sort of like "Billy Pilgrim" in Kurt Vonngut's "Slaughter House Five."
We have become "unstuck" in time!
(Here is a plot summary of that book!)
Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim, a disoriented, ill-trained American soldier, is captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge.So folks, that's me too. Time travelling Allan!
The Germans imprison him and other PoWs in a disused slaughterhouse in Dresden.
During Allied air raids, PoWs and guards alike hide in a deep cellar; because of their safe hiding place, they are some of the few survivors of the city-destroying firestorm.
For unexplained reasons, Billy has come "unstuck in time."
He is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.
They exhibit him in a zoo with movie star Montana Wildhack as his mate.
The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives.
They believe they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the correctness of their theories.
Billy travels forward and back in time, reliving occasions of his life, real and fantastic.
He spends time on Tralfamadore; in Dresden; in the War, walking in deep snow before his German capture; in his post-war married life in the U.S.A. of the 1950s; and in the moment of his murder.
Billy's death is the consequence of a string of events. Before the Germans capture Billy, he meets Roland Weary, a jingoist character who constantly chastizes him for his lack of enthusiasm toward war.
At their capture, the Germans confiscate everything Weary has, including his boots, giving him clogs to wear; Weary eventually dies of gangrene caused by the clogs.
In his deathbed, Weary managed to convince Paul Lazzaro that Billy is to blame for; Paul vows to avenge Weary's death by killing Billy, because revenge is "the sweetest thing in life".
Time-traveler Billy, already knows where, when, and how he will be killed: Paul Lazzaro shoots him after a speech in a balkanized United States on February 13, 1976.
Every time I wake up I'm at a different age.
Hope I'm twenty again tomorrow!
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-Allan; That's funny, whenever I look at my husband he looks more like my father.
Barbara M.,
-I know barbara! I once called my husband "Dad", it was so wmbarrassing, luckily i was half asleep and it went unnoticed as he hardly ever listened to me anyway! LOL.
Isn't it a bitch? I looked on a dating site once and all the guys my age looked too old!
Georgiana S.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know......!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E ! and as a paperback H E R E !
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com
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