'Orange Is the New Black' ... Geek Is the New Chic... 60 Is the New?

I guess I could look at my birthday as the third time I've reached 20 -- but that makes 80 seem somewhat too close.
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60.

The natural number following 59 and preceding 61.

Three score...

The code for international dialing to Malaysia.

If you play darts, the highest score you can achieve with one throw.

My age after my birthday this week...

60.

An age I always associated with old -- and now it's me.

Truth is, when I'm with my grandchildren I occasionally run into guys older than me who have children (second or third marriage...maybe more) younger than my children's. However, the flip side of that feel good is that my wife is often mistaken for our daughter's sister, somehow I'm always the non-contested father.

I guess I could look at my birthday as the third time I've reached 20 -- but that makes 80 seem somewhat too close.

Or I could use the popular 60 is the new 40, but my 40-year-old friends don't think that's very funny.

George Carlin had a smart take on the semantics of it all -- "I'm 60 years of age. That's 16 Celsius" but the increments are too close in this system, I feel like I will get older quicker.

I definitely subscribe to Ogden Nash's view: "You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely." And if you ask my family and close friends, they will corroborate this one.

And as my wife Debbie keeps telling me, it's all in our control. Listen:

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." -- Mark Twain

Easy for her to say -- she looks like the kid's sister.

But to be serious for a moment.

Our time-keeping system is a remnant of the one created by the Babylonians... way back when -- 60 second in a minute... 60 minutes in an hour.

And that of course got me thinking about time passing, about legacies, about making the most of it all, which led me right to one of my favorite poems written by Rudyard Kipling, "If"...
Listen:

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run"

And there you have it -- the only way to look at 60 is to fill it to the brim -- and make that 60, 70, 80 -- 20... whatever -- fill it up, leave no room, make it all count...

Looking back I can only hope I have done my best to do so -- looking forward I can only hope I will.

Here is to 60 -- unabashedly and proudly the new... 60!

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