Discharged from the Assisted Living Tour

OK, so the joke is quickly losing its humor.  

Yesterday I began the sermon by recounting a conversation we had overheard while boarding a plane home from vacation between two twenty-somethings; one of whom had apparently just gotten a new job. The question was eventually raised about the person who had previously been in the job.

“He had been there about 9 years, and apparently was a really nice guy – everybody seemed to like him a lot – but he was a really old guy – you know, like 55 – and had apparently lost his enthusiasm.”

A “really old guy – like 55.” I confessed how I had wanted to turn around and smack the guy, but at 54 I no longer had the strength; that it was all I could do to simply totter of the jetway and collapse into the plane. 

Ha!  Ha! Ha!  It was funny.  Everybody laughed.  I went on, with any luck, to make some relevant point.  

Our day ended with the joy of attending a concert by The Eagles, my all-time favorite rock band which had so influenced my musical youth.  It has only been as an adult that I have gotten to hear them in concert -- long after their glory days, their eventual breakup, and eventual reunion.  This would be my third time to share their company for an evening.  We parked, we passed through the doors, we found our seats, and eventually -- finally -- the lights darkened, silhouetted shapes took their places on the stage, a spotlight illuminated founding member Glen Frey who welcomed the audience and encouraged everyone to check their tickets:  "This is the Eagles Assisted Living Tour..." he announced.  It was funny.  Everyone laughed -- all 15,000 or so us.  Everyone laughed again, later in the concert, when Don Henley announced that there would be a short intermission.  "Hey," he mused, "we're getting old.  We need to take a rest."  The guy seated behind us cracked that, given their age, they all needed to head back stage and hit the restroom.  Clever.

Now this morning I open my email to find today's poem-of-the-day to which I subscribe, sent to me from The Writer's Almanac and Garrison Keillor.  Today's contribution is a poem title "Old Men" by Ken Hada, and begins...

I make it a point now
to wave to old men I pass
old men standing in shade
of a yard, maybe
a daughter's place
where now he's just a tenant

trying to understand role reversal.

Enough, already.

On the wall at the vet's office where we have spent so much time in recent months is a framed poster showing a frolicking dog, with the caption, "We don't stop having fun because we grow old; we grow because we stop having fun."

Despite, then, the age that I occasionally feel, I'm still having fun -- and fully intend to continue in that endeavor, so I think I will take the veterinary wisdom to heart and set aside all this humor of decrepitude.

And get on with the fun of living.