I’m sure there was a time when I was just “thinning” on top.
Going bald, rather than actually, just bald – although I have a bit of the “Captain Picard” back of the head fringe. Not that I am the least self concious about it. Any vanity is purely intelectual!
I do recall that my beard used to be flame red (really) in my youth, then speckled. Then I briefly had “Mexican bandit moustache” trails of white in a ginger field, through salt and pepper whisps, to todays snowy white santa look.
Still what does that matter? Time flows by for all of us, and the shiny pate and snowy beard are as nothing beside a youthful heart – although the blood pressure pills, the bad knees, the broken toe, the false teeth,and the squinty eye do register a few extra years, and I’m distinctly less “bouncy” when I fall, and some of the spring has gone from my recovery (“ow!” I’ll say , and just lie here for a bit). Still overall we do not really perceive our own aging, unless perhaps it is brought into sharp focus.
The information that the gap between world war 2 and the start of my/our? University years, is now less then the time from then, till the present day (wait! really?), while very interesting in a conversational way, shocks, more than it entertains.
“Surely that can’t be true! we are still young” we rail against fate. But we deceive ourselves, sometimes intentionally, sometimes….sometimes we just forget.
[Dinner party in family house. Three sisters are sharing memories of their childhood and teen years, and the familly and small community in which they grew up]
S.I.L. ” …I remember doctor X (probably a Roddy or Angus), he was OLD. Must of been in his late fifties early sixties, bald, with white hair….. why is everyone looking at me?”
Of course it was cast up all night, and probably will be again.
After all if we cannot laugh at oursleves, then we really are old.
Next Week on IaDL: Where did I put my glasses?
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 