Forty Twelve
My first real job was as a writer of scripts for interactive videodisc training programs as at a place called Wilson Learning in Santa Fe, New Mexico, back in 1984. I was 27 years old and all grown up, I thought.
There was a guy there who came on about the same time I did; his name was Doug Stewart and he was 52 years old.
Dude was a fucking fossil!
He struggled with the technology, told boring stories of other places he worked at, and stared at the computer screen through the bottoms of his bifocals.
Loser!
But now I’m that guy.
As of today, I’m as old as a deck of cards, as old as Doug Stewart was when I met him.
A quarter of a century is a long time; it seems to me that when somebody is that much older than you, they’re definitely old. Like 52 is nothing to me now, but 77, that’s fucking decrepit.
Still, I still am able to get out at night, on a bike, with a gang of cyclists, most to whom I’ve got that same two and a half decade head start on life, and manage to keep up even if , from time to time, I do feel a bit like a wraith walking around the land of the living with nothing to say.
And when that happens, as it did last night as we congregated on the topmost top of Kite Hill in Gasworks Park, I prefer to just drink in the scenery with my eyes, feeling for all the world like Chief fucking Seathl himself, wrapped in a horsehair blanket, stoic and watchful.
Best of all, I managed not to give my even older friend, Chris, a heart attack, as I dragged him along, although that did mean we came home before the inevitable outdoor fire and class one drunken shenanigans.
On the plus side, we’re both still alive, albeit older by a day.
There was a guy there who came on about the same time I did; his name was Doug Stewart and he was 52 years old.
Dude was a fucking fossil!
He struggled with the technology, told boring stories of other places he worked at, and stared at the computer screen through the bottoms of his bifocals.
Loser!
But now I’m that guy.
As of today, I’m as old as a deck of cards, as old as Doug Stewart was when I met him.
A quarter of a century is a long time; it seems to me that when somebody is that much older than you, they’re definitely old. Like 52 is nothing to me now, but 77, that’s fucking decrepit.
Still, I still am able to get out at night, on a bike, with a gang of cyclists, most to whom I’ve got that same two and a half decade head start on life, and manage to keep up even if , from time to time, I do feel a bit like a wraith walking around the land of the living with nothing to say.
And when that happens, as it did last night as we congregated on the topmost top of Kite Hill in Gasworks Park, I prefer to just drink in the scenery with my eyes, feeling for all the world like Chief fucking Seathl himself, wrapped in a horsehair blanket, stoic and watchful.
Best of all, I managed not to give my even older friend, Chris, a heart attack, as I dragged him along, although that did mean we came home before the inevitable outdoor fire and class one drunken shenanigans.
On the plus side, we’re both still alive, albeit older by a day.
posted by Professor Dave at 10:07 AM
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