Upon the Suspicious Occasion of My Birthday: Year Sixty

Why am I using the last few minutes of this stunningly, stupidly perfect fall day--its pristine, crystalline shards of yellow-green silently tinkling at the window--to talk about me?

It's one of two things:

--ego

--the need to tell a story (code for "I want to talk about me now")

I think it's both and much, much more!

The need to tell a story usually holds hands with the belief that someone wants to hear it.

Oh, whatever.

It's my birthday and I'll blog if I want to.

I figure if Mr. Google thinks I'm important enough to wish "happy birthday", then, by god, I can darn well write something about me.

I had a good day. As I was enjoying my senior omelette at Denny's, I thumbed through my current issue of AARP. Medicare supplements, pharmaceuticals, shingles, hospice, care-giving, phones with big numbers.... HELP! I love the AARP magazine, but, damnit!

I shook it off.

This morning had been the kind of delicious damp and cool grey that almost made me feel like I lived in a nice part of the country, instead of a homemade solar oven. So I went for a long walk and thought about some things I always hear "older" people say about getting "older".

Wisdom. I don't think I have any. I don't know how you find out when you have or get it either. Maybe I have it and just don't know it. I think I have something else altogether: "wise-dumb". I'm wise enough to ask a truly wise person for advice, but too dumb to be that person.

Money. Of course it doesn't buy happiness. But it does help pay for the pursuit of it.

Regrets. Many.

Self-Knowledge. Older people who say they really know themselves annoy me, because I'm either jealous of them or think they're lying. I know a few things about myself. I know I like a senior omelette on occasion. It has mushrooms and squash and is pretty awesome. But I have secrets I keep from myself, too. If you must know, I'm like the room in the haunted mansion where the nanny was murdered: closed off and spooky.

Bucket lists. Facebook sags with tales of far-flung adventures, tremendous achievements, photos of a-maaay-zing sites, wonders and fancy cuisine. I respectfully ask you to please spare me the fulfillment of your dreams.

I have no such list. I just hope to get around and see and do a few things and hope I don't die in my super-air-conditioned cubicle at work, my fingers frozen to the keyboard typing the letter "j" over and over, endlessly, eternally.

Now, if I did have one, it would be more of a "fuck-it list".

That's it. That's all I know so far.

Now, how about some darling baby pictures?!!!

I was an amazingly gifted, brilliant child. At one, I became The World Wildlife Fund's youngest spokes-baby. You see how I could cry on demand?

Great fund-raising skill.

I was so talented, I even decorated my own birthday cakes.

My mother was obviously too goofy to do it.

I had a great social conscience, too, and often distributed free balloons to poor people.

In 1956, I became a doctor of veterinary medicine. Assisted by my sister, Jane, who was in the Navy, I performed snout bypass surgery on an endangered male panda.

He recovered and went on to father more endangered pandas.

So THAT'S why I had all those cavities....!

I hope you all have important revelations on your birthdays, too, whatever they are. But, whatever they are, don't share them with me.

Thanks for reading.