There was a time in my life -- sometimes it feels like a million years ago and sometimes it feels like yesterday -- when I would make a decision and run with it into a fire. Nothing could stop me or even necessarily slow me down.
It wasn't that I thought I was always right. It was that I didn't think period. Each day was a millennium and I was the sun at the middle of it all. It made for some rough going on occasion. But I wasn't looking back. I was going to live forever. Or die young. And neither gave me great pause.
Three weeks ago, I stood in front of an audience of 1900 strangers and admitted that I'm seventy years old. I had to work up to the admission for a month before the event. I had spent some years already telling people, "I'm really, really old." But I couldn't typically find the nerve to casually admit my age in conversations. Except with my doctor. Or a very close friend. And then only in a whisper.
I cracked jokes about it in front of my students in class. "I would tell you how old I am," I'd say, "but I'm afraid they'd come make me retire." Or I'd quip on a different occasion, "I'm perfectly fine with getting old. There's only two options, you know: getting old or getting dead -- and I'm not nearly ready to get dead yet."
