I marvel at how my life has changed over the last fifty or so years.

Of course, why shouldn’t it? Fifty years is a long time, a half-century for God’s sake. I’ve had the good fortune of living every minute of it, sometimes squeezing every second I could out of some of those precious moments.

I think the big difference in my life at 59 versus 19 is the fact it has slowed down some, something for which I can be thankful. Although I loved the fast pace of my 19-going-on-30 life, I tore through it much too quickly. I barely stopped to allow the paint to dry before deciding to tear through another wall of opportunity.

Spontaneous is the best way to describe my life at 19, as it was for many teens in the 1960s. We didn’t believe in letting too many thought ferment. If a good idea crossed my mind, I just forged ahead and did it.

And in that short period of time between graduating from high school and turning 21, I packed in a lifetime of experiences, sowing wild oats wherever I could. For instance:
I enrolled in college and then flunked out. I had a wonderful time in the process, though.

I enlisted in the Air Force, only to receive a medical discharge during my basic training.

Once I was a civilian again, I realized it was time to find my niche and hopefully make some money along the way. While Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were tinkering with mathematical equations and computers, I worked as a bar tender, as a spot-welder at an automobile factory and as a fill-in for a manufacturer of bumpers of all sizes and shapes. I did many things on midnight shift at a fabricating plant, turned down a football scholarship or two and then landed a job at my hometown newspaper.
Finding a job I truly loved, gave me some independence while earning about two dollars per hour. I bought my first car and then sold it so I could move to Hawaii for a year.

In the 50th state, I landed my first job in the hotel industry, then as an offset printing press operator. In a few short months, I was promoted to manager of a print shop in Honolulu, but then was offered and accepted the job of head houseman at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Life was good, really good.

Prosperity in the Pacific was too much for me, though. So, I returned to Ohio, was rehired at the newspaper, got married and tried to settle down.When I returned to Ohio, went back to college, was rehired at the newspaper, got married and tried to settle down.

I never did, though. It took me a long time to grow up. I always wanted to smell the roses, but refused to find the time for such nonsense. I was afraid if I stopped for too long, life would pass me by.

As I approach my sixtieth birthday and look back, I realize the years certainly did speed by quickly, and I made a few mistakes along the way. But I wouldn’t change anything in my past. I had one heck of a good time over the last forty years. Those experiences have prepared me for the future and allow me to embrace the present.

As I walk confidently into the twilight of my existence, I’m happy to say I still haven’t grown up. I no longer drink huge amounts of alcohol or act spontaneously on the whims of middle age. Instead, I write every day and realize it is the one thing that makes me happy, regardless of how old or young I might be. It is my fountain of youth, the gateway to the dreams of one who has and always will gret every second of life with a bearhug.

I also realize that if I, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button of silver screen fame, could have lived life in reverse, from old age to youth, I most certainly would have been a juvenile delinquent of great renown. Why does that sound so curiously appealing?