This maturing business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Now, I’m not talking about the aches and pains and graying hair, I’m talking about the karma.  You know.  How you feel about maturing.  We called it getting older when I was a kid, but now that I’m getting older, maturing seems like a better fit.  I thought being a teenager was a struggle, but this is really trying.

See, I don’t feel old.  So I want to be “with it.”  But there’s a lot going on in the world that I’ve already been through and I don’t know why we’re going through it all again.  When I read about some study that informs the world that “bicycle riding on highways contributes to increased injuries and deaths,”  I just think, why didn’t they ask me.  I’ve written about this before.  My mother always told me to stay out of the road. Some young person decided to study the phenomenon and reached a “DUH” conclusion for people that rode bicycles with fat tires and one speed.

I struggle with computers and computer driven things.  I love it when they do what they’re supposed to do, but when they get an attitude, I’m helpless.  Usually I turn to my son, Jesse, who easily fixes everything with a few keystrokes.  Sometimes, though, he tells me there’s no hope.  That troubles me more than not knowing how to fix the thing.  I can’t believe the thing is junk, but it is.

I don’t wear my hair like I did in high school, but I don’t wear it like I’m an old man.  I don’t know exactly how old men wear their hair, but I’m certain that my hair is not like that.  I look at piercings and tattoos that same way.  They may look neat to you, but when you’re my age the whole picture changes.  At least with piercings you can just take them out and put them in your jewelry draw.  The tattoos are another deal.  It’s not that I’m against tattoos, it’s just that I don’t get it.  And that’s the real issue, I guess.  It seems like some stuff I get and some stuff I don’t get.

Some of the stuff that I think I get, I probably don’t.  It’s just that I think I get it.  The reality is that I’m out of touch with what’s what.  I never thought it would come to this, but it has. I like 50s and 60s cars.  The cars of today all look alike and it started with the Ford Taurus.  The potato car.  They all look like potatoes.  I like rock and roll music.  Today’s country is the best substitute I can find.  I don’t even want to look at or listen to things I don’t like.  A few years ago we went to a bluegrass festival in Cornish and I didn’t get it.  We got there on Friday night and I met a truck driver that knew some of the same people I did and he started explaining the whole bluegrass thing to me.  By late Saturday, I was starting to get it and by Sunday afternoon when it was time to leave, I was really catching on, but then it was over and now I don’t get it again.

Snowbirds I don’t get. All they talk about is how cheap the buffets are in Florida and flea markets. Seriously.  I ask about their winter and that’s all they did, go to flea markets and buffet lines. They don’t work all winter because there’s so much to do.  There’s nothing to do up here so they work all summer.  What sense does that make?

Here’s what’s really troubling.  When I do finally get something, it’s outdated, and I have to try to get new stuff.  I thought that young people were getting more polite, but then I realized they were just getting the door for the old guy.  The list goes on and on.