You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Birthdays.
As I embark around the sun for my 53rd time, I am forced to reflect on the passage of time and submit to the hour glass of existence.
Rich or poor, black or white, good or bad, we all have one thing in common; Time.
It is the common denominator of life.
Time waits for no one and we will all eventually end up as cosmic dust on the horizon of forever.
Tomorrow I celebrate another birthday.
It is bitter sweet. The child in me wants to blow out the candles and toot the birthday horn. The old man in me hates that I am climbing ever closer to the end of a long ladder.
As I ruminate on my hiccup on this planet, I am pleased.
I am glad to be alive. I have good friends and great kids and not a grey hair on my head.
My daughter’s friends say I have sold my soul to the devil to keep all of my hair.
“baldness comes from your mother’s side of the family,” I am told. “Did your mom’s dad have all his hair?”
NO.
I laugh. Both my grandfather’s were cue balls in another life.
Perhaps I am adopted, or spawned from a test tube in a high radiation zone in a classified Nevada airfield.
As I hurtle around the solar ball of life, yet again, I look in the mirror. I see a few wrinkles under blue eyes that don’t see so well anymore.
But the memory I recall is still sharp. I see the 18 year old who wants to drive his 240 Z down the coast. I see a young man who is impatient, head swelling with thoughts and ideas for a future that will be grandiose. I see a recalcitrant youngster who wants to drive too fast with the AC/DC blaring too loud.
I look in the mirror and I see the kid who wants to go to the beach and watch surfer girls get in and out of their wet suits. I see a precocious young man who will do community service at the animal shelter, only to let all the dogs loose because keeping them penned up is not humane.
I look in the mirror and I see the 21 year old who repelling down the side of his frat house. I see the young man who embraces an unanticipated road trip to Ensenada with only 20 dollars in his sock. Why is there a keg in the back or the rent-a-car? Are we really wearing tuxedos, and walking down the beach covered in sea weed scaring Mexican children?
Why does this 21 year old eat cat tacos and sleep under a gasoline tanker truck and drive toward the US Mexico border at a high rate of speed with weapons trained on him from 2 countries?
I look in the mirror and I see the young man who will chop up a pool table with an ax and set it on fire on the Delta Chi front lawn to lure sorority girls to a party.
I look in the mirror and I see the young man who is working 3 jobs. I see him waiting tables at the Olive Garden and the Cappricio restaurant at the Airport Marriott. I see him sending out demo tapes while working in the KABC sports department.
“I don’t have any sports jobs, kid,” the grizzled news director will tell me. “But I like your energy if you want to report.”
I don’t want to leave Redondo Beach California and move to Idaho Falls, Idaho.
So what do I do?
Hello Gem State.
I look in the mirror and see the 35 year old who is a veteran broadcaster, who has been over seas covering operation desert shield. I see a journalist who has been shot at, spit on, and had a brick thrown at his head. I have seen dead bodies burned and blood ooze out of a dying man’s skull. The color of death under the street lights is a stain on my brain that is indelible.
I look in the mirror and I see a dad who gets up relentlessly every day to make sure that his kids have a better life than him. I see the dad who has traveled to a thousand soccer games and sat in chlorinated pool houses watching his daughter swim.
I look in the mirror now and I realize that I am on the back 9 of life.
That doesn’t mean the end, just a new beginning, a new phase.
I look in the mirror and know that there is more to do and more to see.
As I approach my 53rd revolution around the flaming constant of time, I smile at the face in the mirror.
I see a good man who cares about his family, his community, and respects the integrity of life.
Happy birthday old man. Enjoy the journey around the sun, and relish the moments that make up each day.
Life’s Crazy™