The other side of 70...

In August, 2007, I had a once in a lifetime experience that unfortunately not everyone gets to have. I went to bed 69 years old and got up the next morning 70. During that August night, a poignant message was concocted somewhere out in the cosmos and delivered directly to me. It was a message letting me know that nothing goes on forever, not even the Sopranos. To me, it's natures way of telling me I just passed the Golden Years.

So here I am, frantically working to wrap up my writing career that never started. Never existed. Never produced a printed book.

When a person is writing, there are worlds created between words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. Sorry. I don't know when the Golden Years started for me. I guess it was the day I typed the two words and the Golden Years existed. But, as of now, I've decided that the Golden Years ended the day I turned 70.

So what comes after the Golden Years? I don't know. But I do know what it means.

It means I was lucky. It means I was careful. It means that, without even knowing it at the time, I stayed shy of enough bad habits and, totally without a clue, avoided working high risk jobs. It means that I didn't step in front of a car that ran a red light or bought a ticket on a plane that didn't arrive at its destination.

Lawrence Block wrote a mystery Eight Million Ways To Die. Due to destiny or luck, I avoided all eight million of them and, while sleeping in my bed on that August night, my internal odometer clicked from 69 to 70.

And I passed the Golden Years.