Gifts, cards, food, MySpace greetings, phone calls …

It is a happy and wealthy man who has so many friends still willing to notice a birthday when you’ve had so many already.  Uh, had so many birthdays, not had so many friends.  Well, I’ve had a few of those friends.  This isn’t going the way I thought it would.

So, anyway, I’m a happy guy on my 57th birthday.  I’m three years younger than President W, who also celebrates his birthday today.  Looking at the polls, I think I may be slightly more popular than he is.  Of course, my mistakes haven’t caused the deaths of thousands, so I’ve got that going for me.

Just as when I was a child, I don’t feel a year older.  In fact, I feel like a child.  Maybe a child of about 30.  I wonder who she might be?  Uhm, this also isn’t going as planned.

So, anyway, here I am at this advanced age and still I’m being photographed as a model and the doctors tell me I’m in remarkably good shape FOR MY AGE (I still don’t like that prepositional phrase.  Why wouldn’t we say that so and so looks good for their age when they are 25?  It’s because it’s unnecessary, right?  So, I can’t be healthy, I have to be healthy FOR MY AGE.  It’s a bitch.  Getting older is not for sissies.)

I wish I had a wealth of wisdom to pass along.  You know, those verities of life like:

          1.     Don’t spit into the wind.

          2.     It’s always a bad idea to pee on an electrified cattle fence.

          3.     Buy low, sell high.

However, I’m a few verities short these days.  I think I would be rather surprised to find my blog entries collected into a Tao de Ching.  It’s barely possible, given a 3 year old grand-daughter, that I’ll be remembered a century from now.  I’m comfortable knowing that 200 years from now, my existence will be entirely erased with the exception of the odd bit of DNA.

I suppose if I have any wisdom, it begins there — with trying to remember than most of the small stuff I sweat is small stuff and that it will hardly matter at all a year from now, much less 5 years or 50 years or 500 years from now.

That, and that I’m fairly sure that men are not supposed to understand women and vice versa.  To understand would erase the mystery and destroy the balance of the universe.

So, I’m along my merry way, trying to do the best I can from day to day, comfortable with growing older and not up.

Thank you, my friends and family.  You are all that my life is worth and more than I can otherwise aspire to.

Happy Birthday to me.