If I Die Young

Statistically speaking I have now narrowed down the three most heavily trafficked time slots on the Internet: Tuesday evenings between seven and eight, Friday afternoons from two to three, and Sunday mornings somewhere in between eleven and one.  I only tell you this because it has been a great discovery in helping me see when to publish this grand old blog of mine and get the most readers.  83% of you are going to browse Facebook on Tuesday night just after finishing “Pretty Little Liars”, or on Fridays after lunch when you have already checked out of work and are ready for the weekend, or also on Sunday mornings when your Sunday School teacher forgot to read the manual on how not to suck at teaching the gospel.  It’s because of this that I will consistently reward you with the best blogposts you’ll read all week. 

Thanks for being such a reliable clientele.

For full effect, download “Old Man” by Neil Young, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

Before I delve into diabetic chaps with braided ear hair, I would like to make a small suggestion that perhaps may improve the quality of your life.  When your words are on display, whether in a public forum or in a massive e-mail sent to your fellow employees, be a good chap and don’t use the most elaborate, bewildering, polysyllabic words possible to try and impress those around you.  We don’t care that you lay in bed at night and use the thesaurus app to find more extensive language that will put you a level up on the rest of the field who simply use “normal” vocabulary.  Besides, we all know that you’re only going to amount to being an assistant city librarian with an Associates Degree in English anyway, so why look like a fool trying to astonish everybody with big words?  You’re better than that and you know it.  

Anyway, back to ear hair.

Yesterday afternoon the Rhinestone Cowboy and myself took a nice spring ride across St. George as we continued our preparation for that giant triathlon thingy happening in a few weeks.  Great times, I will say.  I didn’t care about the young couple riding those weird looking giant tricycles, or those 100-year old Grandmas picking up their Scottish Terrier’s poop on the trail, they weren’t in the way at all.  Just being outside, with a nice spring wind on our backs, our legs pounding away the miles while the sun beat down on us; it was a glorious day I tell you. 

I sound like I’m writing some kind of romance novel here that stay at home Moms would drool over. 

Ginger protagonist: “And then I saw him there, standing upright in the field of lilies.  He reached over to me and…”

Alright, enough of that… So we’re wrapping up our ride, our legs barely turning the gears as we’re crossing an intersection, when a geezer who might as well be Colonel Sanders’ little brother yells at us while we pass him by.

Little Colonel Sanders: “SLOW DOWN!”

I did a double take in my head wondering if the wrinkled senior was saying that in all seriousness, or if perhaps his granddaughter might have perhaps taught him the delicate art of sarcasm.  He must have been joking.  After all, we were barely moving, nay, crawling past the man.  We were pedaling so slow I nearly lost my entire balance and collapsed on the road, yet this KFC wannabe was asking us to slow down?

Is this what happens when we get old?  Do we begin to see the world at an actual snail’s pace?

We often mock and criticize the elderly for being pioneers of the geriatric, and stubbornly living in their own generation, unable to think outside the box or be able to keep up with the world going on around them, but is this some sort of mental gloss that gets waxed over everybody’s temporal lobes once they hit 70?  Is there a point when we will all wake up in the morning, stare at our wrinkled, grey, beehive-haircutted heads and say, “Alright, I’m done! No more progression! I’m in my own world from here on out, and nobody better ever get in my way!”

Scary to think about, but I think that’s the verdict for everyone

At times I do feel like an old man, like I am pulling a classic Keith Tronic, complaining about giving up the ideal parking spot for my Honda Pilot, or how I need to invest in a more reliable leather couch, and I’m not always proud of that.  The world is a railway express every single day of our lives, with more decisions, responsibilities, and executions to be handled on a non-stop basis. But at what point will we all throw in the towel, live on our own time, and turn to a pair of young’ns walking their bikes past us on the intersection and yell at them to “SLOW DOWN”!?

Whenever that is, I just won’t use really big words.  That way I’ll avoid being stereotyped as both old, and a douchebag.