It's funny how tricky old age is at sneaking up on us

I wrote this for AllVoices six years ago, and my only comment is to say I'm not getting any younger. I will say that I have no desire to wear bell bottoms or listen to the Archies.

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I was glancing at the headlines on the home page here at AllVoices when I noticed something about "two legends of the Ultimate Fighting Championships."

My first reaction was "UFC? What's that? That's not a sport."

My second reaction was "Yes, Michael, you are officially old."

I’m afraid I may have crossed over the line from pleasantly aging to crazy old coot this week here in Texas, and I have a feeling it might have happened all at once.

Deep in the Heart, 2010

We had been visiting Garner State Park in Uvalde County — one of my very favorite Texas destinations so far — for a hike, and we were gathering our stuff together to return to the ranch.

I found my little notebook, my voice recorder, my iPod, my camera, my water bottle and my jacket, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find my glasses.


I had taken them off earlier, and I was pretty sure I had put them on the dashboard. I looked there and couldn’t find them, so I checked to see if they had slipped to the floor.

They hadn’t, so I searched my jacket pockets to no avail. I walked over to the picnic table and looked around, and I walked the area gingerly in case they had fallen onto the ground.

“I guess they’re gone,” I said.

Not great, but no big deal. The glasses I had lost were my old driving glasses, which I have continued to wear since getting the new ones because the photo-gray “sunglass” feature is much better on the old ones. I figured losing the glasses might have been God’s way of telling me it was time to start wearing the newer ones, which I had brought with me to Texas and left in my trailer back at the ranch.

Since I was a passenger in the van and not the driver, I could easily function without my glasses for an hour. So we started back to the ranch. I wasn’t thrilled I had lost my glasses, but I certainly wasn’t going to let it bother me.

Halfway back, I realized something. To put it bluntly, I realized that I was a total moron.

I was wearing my glasses. I had been wearing my glasses the entire time I had been looking for them.

Not on the top of my head. Not perched on my forehead. I had been wearing them in the exact way glasses are meant to be worn, and the entire time I was looking for them, my vision was better because I had them on.

The folks I was with were surprised because they thought the pair I had been searching vainly for was a second pair, not the pair I was obviously wearing.

Oops. I had officially become a crazy old coot, the sort of guy who yammers on and on and makes no sense at all.

It reminded me of Bob Greene’s wonderful book, “The 50-Year Dash,” in which he wrote of the difference between how we view ourselves and how our younger co-workers view us once we turn 50.

Greene said that while the average 50-year-old may look in the mirror and see Harrison Ford or Tom Selleck looking back at him, his 25-year-old co-worker is looking at him and seeing Gabby Hayes.

It has been a while since I was 50, but as I have been losing weight and getting into shape the last six weeks, I have started to enjoy my reflection in the mirror a little more.

Not anymore. After what happened today, I’ll look at myself in the mirror and expect the guy looking back at me to start spouting off: “Consarn it, Hoppy.”

But to get back to the UFC, to Extreme Sports and other stuff, we have undergone a fundamental change in this country and I blame it on my g-g-generation.

Before the baby boomers came along, kids were different. They had their own preferences, pleasures and styles, but when they reached adulthood and moved into the work world, they put away their knickers and t-shirts and started wearing business suits.

They stopped playing kick-the-can and started playing golf.

Not always a good thing, unless you love golf.

But the boomers were the generation that changed everything (or at least WE thought so). We didn't put away our blue jeans and we didn't stop listening to the Grateful Dead. We told ourselves our culture was so superior that it would last us all our lives.

Funny, but our kids rejected our culture just as quickly as we rejected our parents' culture.

So if I don't appreciate the UFC ... or hip-hop music ... or whatever styles are popular these days, it isn't anything out of the ordinary.

In fact, it's sort of reassuring.