'I AM HOW OLD!!!!?"

Birge-Bytes:   Do you get the feeling something has changed? Strangers are starting to call you "My dear"!? You are at a rock concert from the 50's and wonder what all the OLD PEOPLE are doing there? If you are at a family reunion...EVERYONE in your family wants to have their picture made with you??! Wow..she is old! Better get that picture
while I can!  You look in a mirror unexpectedly and look like your Mother...and you did not LIKE your Mother?
One minute you are bragging that you survived life  and the next lament the fact you still have so much more to do and to give to others.  The same 24 hours we have ALWAYS had you could swear was being put on "Fast Forward".... one minute you love the over 65 discounts and feel you earned them and the next hating that you qualify now.

You see, every older person you pass STILL HAS THAT CHILD, ADOLESCENT, YOUNG ADULT & MIDDLE AGE CRAZIES in them!  

In spite of all the media blitz for Viagra, intimacy becomes a fond memory....to sell the stimulus drugs they would have you
believe ALL old people are still swinging from the chandeliers with insatiable lust....perhaps for the single or "non-monogamous marrieds" that are actually perhaps masking loneliness and will do whatever they think they need to do from social pressure. I have had one man in my life for over 50 years and never regretted being faithful to him...obviously, I didn't qualify for a Cosmopolitan Advice Column but I sure could about Loving Unconditionally, Respecting, Admiring and NEVER wanting to hurt that person....add a Sense of Humor and Compromise and you have the RECIPE I have followed.

There ARE benefits to being 72:

Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
In a Hostage situation, you are likely to be released first!
No one expects you to run....anywhere!
People no longer view you as a Hypochondriac!
There is nothing left to "learn the hard way".
Things you buy now will not wear out.
You can live without SEX but not your glasses!
Your eyes won't get much worse!
You sing a long with elevator music.
You quit trying to hold your stomach in NO MATTER WHO walks by.
The older we get, the fewer things are worth standing in line for.

The picture actually is not an exxageration by too much. My son got me a birthday cake that DID CATCH FIRE! WE ATE FAST!

I LIKE being old. It has set me FREE. I LIKE the person I have become. I care LESS about what other people think and am more fully ME than ever before when I was an Extreme "People-Pleaser"....fearful of my own shadow and terrified of not being loved or worthy of others loving me.         Mrs.Birge 02/09/1941