34/30

So I'm in the restroom staring at the back of my jeans and like it's some sort of surprise to me I see 34/30 on the tag and I wince.  Christ! if you split me open like a vanilla bean and laid me out on a counter I'd be wider than I am long!  For me, this and many other reminders of my fleeting past have become all too common in my life lately.

I just got my first pair of prescription eye glasses about four months ago and I absolutely loathe using them.  But I positively can't function without them either.  And what's harder on me than hanging them on my nose every day is the memory of my fighter pilot vision that I still possessed less than a year ago.  I reveled in the fact that I could spot troopers out on the highway farther ahead of me than most mere mortals could see.  And I used to think that I could even see better at night but all of that is slowly coming to an end.  The reality for me and many others in my age bracket is that things like this that we took for granted twenty years ago are all slowly leaving us today.  Or in some cases, making it twice as hard to hold on to.

I just hope I don't become the fifty-something guy I see at the gym every night.  The one with the hair so ridiculous you ask yourself time after time if this guy is serious.  The same one who walks around in his zuma pants or full spandex and refuses to take his weight belt off even to ride the stationary bike, fearing the entire world might actually see the true size of his gut.  You know this person, he probably frequents your club as well.  And unfortunately this same guy looms inside every one of us who are approaching our fourth and fifth centuries.  It's whether or not we decide to age gracefully that determines if this clown is going to be let off his leash or not.

But in all this gloom and doom I can find some comfort in my current developmental stage.  That in the fact that I have life experience over my younger, leaner and cleaner brethren.  Don't get me wrong, most of the young guys that I know are very bright individuals, they just make rookie mistakes that a guy my age usually sees coming a mile away.  And when things like this happen to them, they pound their chests harder and charge right back in, usually to find the same results.  I read somewhere that this is the definition of insanity!  Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly is indicative of a lack of maturity.

So with all the systems slowly failing, and the chips and dings showing on the old body, I can confidently say that being right most of the time and having a head full of experience from the college of hard knocks takes away plenty of pain and shame of a 34 inch waist.