AGING FEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME

Aging fear kicks in when you start wondering about tomorrow.

Will you be there for it?

Why wouldn’t you?

Oh, that’s why.

Maybe you had a bad day, had a bad dream, or just felt lost and lonely and no one to tell you everything will be fine.

Why wouldn’t everything be fine? It might be, it might not, but put yourself in the right frame of mind.

You do the work, put in the effort, but no rewards?

Where’s the bank vault full of money you can to roll around in like Scrooge McDuck?

 

Your MVP award didn’t arrive?

Your Oscar got lost in the mail?

Your Nobel Prize for literature? Where is it?

If you ask any of these questions, you probably know the answers: You didn’t win any MVP, the trophy isn’t lost, you didn’t win anything.

No matter how old you are, people win these things every year, just not you.

But why should that bother you? It’s okay to feel good for others’ success.

Sometimes a big win spells doom when the recipient of a fantastic honor gets turned around and stops doing what they did to win anything.

‘I’m a big winner and everyone must treat me special.’

Do you know people like that? If you knew them before they turned special, you may get Aging Fear.

They are who you want to be and you know that will never happen.

 

What Happens Instead

Once you get caught up in the lives of others, of celebrities and cultural icons,  you start shrinking, or they’re just so big and getting bigger.

They are universally acclaimed, and you are an unknown in your own small town.

What you hear, what you don’t know, is even the big stars have moments they wish for normalcy, of walking down the street in peace, not looking over their shoulder to see who is stalking them for pictures to sell.

From cracked.com:

 

He had makeup artists put prosthetics on his face until he was no longer recognizable, and had to spend an afternoon without adulation: “Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.’”

 

That’s Kevin Bacon as a common man.

This is Gwyneth Paltrow:

 

She took her Shallow Hal fat suit for a spin in public, and was devastated by the lack of fawning from strangers: “No one would make eye contact with me because I was obese. I was wearing this black shirt with big snowmen on it. For some reason, the fat clothes they make… The clothes they make for women that are overweight are horrible. I felt humiliated because people were really dismissive.”

 

Aging Fear Starts With Kids

If you wait until after high school to get married and have kids you might be in your thirties.

That’s the writer in the hat and stripes with the team.

This is the year before I took the head coaching reins with the best assistant coach around in the white shirt. (Hey John)

It was an easy decision to coach: The head guy at the time was determined to win the World Cup starting in kindergarten.

My goal was keeping the kids interested in sports from one season to the next from soccer to basketball to indoor soccer to baseball, football, wrestling, and anything else that they showed interest in.

Some parents step aside for sports, others step up.

I figured I’d give it a go for a season or two and ended up coaching my last team during my youngest kid’s senior year.

Every season for years I ran two teams back to back in practices with my older and younger kids.

Did they like that their old man showed up for them and their friends? I never asked.

Being around kids and sports is the fountain of youth. All told, my wife and I went to the games and matches including tennis, water polo, football, and wrestling.

It was a great run, no one quit, and when it was over I stepped aside to make room for others.

During my time the responsibility of interacting with the youth on the fields and courts, during practice and games, was the most important thing I did.

Did I overdo it? Probably. Was it too much? Naw.

 

Remembering Where You Come From

These are the high school seniors from 1973.

I knew some of the guys from first grade on, like my kids with their friends.

I saw one of them last week.

We’re all seventy by now, like an old guard of Bulldogs. This is the team that turned the corner after too many losing seasons.

We had a losing season too, but not a one win losing season.

The new coach hired the year before made it possible. We were all the product of losing seasons and bad coaching that he changed.

That’s me in the back row, the tall guy. I had a miserable season with no mobility due to bad ankles from a tape job gone wrong.

One of the guys went to a Division One college wrestling team and won a national title. (Hey Mark)

One joined the Navy. (Hey Ron)

Two years later a couple of them joined the Army. (Hey Gary)

Looking back, this is the first time I felt aging fear. I played hurt all season and everyone was faster than me, like I was an old man before my time.

Lucky for me, I recovered my health and vitality by the end of football season, just in time for wrestling season.

Since then I’ve endured the usual aches and pains, illness, weight gain, and accumulated titles along the way like uncle, husband, father, and now grandfather.

Ordinary, average, and enjoying the heck out of life where I’m at, which is being engaged, interested, and starting new things all of the time.

As luck would have it, I’ve got a longterm wife who is engaged, interested, and starting new things all of the time and I’m working to keep up with her.

My current goal fights aging fear to a draw: Being the best grandpa.

 

What Makes A Good Grandpa?

PS:

When grown men, knowledgeable men, find their names associated with scum, they band together and convince each other they did nothing wrong.

They claim they are cleared, exonerated, not guilty, in spite of evidence that shows quite the opposite.

PSS:

Some people hope for a miracle cure
Some people just accept the world as it is
But I’m not willing to lay down and die
Because I am an innocent man

 

Who is an innocent man?