This past June I had my 64th birthday. Whoop to do! For some reason I don’t understand, I am looking forward to being 65, sort of in the way I looked forward to being 18 and 21. I’m not sure why, I already get $.27 coffee and a discounted fishing license, but I like the idea of finally being old. Or, I might raise the bar to 70 just to defy everyone who talks down pork grease like it was liquid anthrax.

Do I eat healthy foods? Yes, three times a day or more. If it grows on a tree, a vine, or a stem, walks, crawl, swims, or flies I’ll eat it. Do I run? Not since I earned enough money to buy a car. Exercise? If you just have to know I just exercised my right arm and hand about 30 times eating a huge bowl of ice cream with so much sugar most people would go comatose. I know that one day someone will discover that what I have suspected is really true, that pork grease is the natural lubricant for the human body. Yes, I know the kind of eating I do kills folks. Some of my uncles were almost 90 when it finally got them. When they died they had enough grease in them to lube a freight train.

Have you ever wondered why old people are grouchy? Maybe it’s because they are sick of hearing young people whine about a slow computer or an unwanted noise at 75 in their Hummer. It’s because they know that almost everyone much younger than them don’t have a clue what a real problem is. Your opening in your built in cabinet in the family room is too small for a flat screen TV the size of the right side of a JB Hunt trailer? Boo hoo.

My body is literally wearing out from too many miles and low maintenance and some gal at McDonald’s looks like I have just banished her to a concentration camp because I want to order a Big ‘n Nasty meal deal. Pain is my constant companion of late so for some unknown reason I am not too sympathetic that a cashier at Office Depot broke a nail. I am so old school that I expect sales people to at least act like they appreciate it when I buy their goods and services. Why can’t people smile? Is it asking too much to expect someone, anyone, to appreciate that I am giving them my business?

One more pain in my back for good measure. Most people are not nearly as smart as they think they are. Some nerdy dude graduates from college with razor thin margin above dismal failure and thinks he is a mental giant superior to the peasants. I learned some things in school but it was bumping up against reality that taught me what is really important. One of the flaws of being young is that you think you know too much to learn from some older person’s mistakes. You just have to make a fool of yourself to get it. I guess thats the way it’s always been.

If you have reached the place in life where a vehicle is a tool to get your butt from point A to point B, and is not a status symbol, you are probably getting older. It seems that the younger a fellow is the more fragile his ego. That is a truth of life and a sad one because is costs lots of cash and broken hearts to keep an ego polished. I am quite content with the scars on mine. I am satisfied just being Royce Ogle.

I’m about to go to bed and sleep like a puppy. I have a great wife, good kids and grand kids, and if I don’t wake up I’ll have an even better deal than you. For almost 50 years of stumbling along, sometimes falling, going the wrong way, missing turns in the road, and most of the time having sweet fellowship, I have been following Jesus. The one area of my life of which I am most sure is that I belong to God, that He keeps His promises and that some day I’ll see Jesus face to face. My confidence is not in Royce but wholly in the God who promised.

Over six decades of living says to this old man what really matters is how you answer this question day by day, “What about Jesus?”

Royce