Getting my kicks (and a nap) with birthday 66
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
When I turned Sweet 16 a half century ago, a gorgeous upperclassman named Laura kissed me on the cheek in the high school band room. That kiss had me flying high the rest of the day.
When I turned Sweet 66, I took a nap. That nap had me smiling until bedtime.
What a difference 50 years can make.
Sixteen-year-old me would have considered a nap boring. A waste of time. Old fogey stuff.
Sixty-six-year-old me, a card-carrying old fogey, wonders why he used to fight so hard against staying home and taking naps.
Besides, one’s 66th birthday is kind of — how do I put this — meh.
I don’t remember it, but the first birthday was significant. It was the first time that grownups let me anywhere near fire — the single candle — and cover my face, high chair, parents, weird aunts and anything else in the way with gobs of frosting.
The 10th birthday means you’ve finally made double digits, which is especially useful if you know someone who gives you birthday cards stuffed with a dollar for every year of your life. Back then, comic books and balsa wood airplanes cost 10 cents, so 10 bucks was a fortune!
At 12, you call yourself a pre-teen. And then 13 rolls around, and ta-dah, you’re a teenager. The grownups were always grousing about the trouble teenagers caused. I couldn’t wait to have that kind of fun myself.
Sweet 16 is for kisses, and by 16, kisses don’t seem nearly as yucky as they did on your third or fourth birthdays. Oh, and 16 was when I could finally snag a learner’s permit. Goodbye bicycle; hello wheels with an engine attached.
At 18, I became a bona fide adult. I was all grown up. I could vote. Now I REALLY could boss around my younger siblings because I was a GROWNUP. My younger sibs never understood that concept. I had to stomp my feet and cry and go tattle to Mom, because they weren’t acknowledging that I was a real, live grown-up adult.
Twenty-one meant I could drink whatever beverages I chose. This one didn’t do much for me because I chose Coca-Cola. Still, there was something magical and mystical about 21. I couldn’t believe what a baby I had been at 18.
Twenty-five meant I had earned a quarter century of respect, and 30 suddenly didn’t seem as old as I thought it was.
At 35, I finally was old enough to be elected president of the United States. Fortunately, I escaped any hints that a single person wanted to nominate me for that headache.
Forty feels a little weird. I kept hearing that “life begins at 40.” I found that an increasing desire to go home and take a nap began at 40.
That half-century mark at 50 started to sound scary, and at 60, I calculated that I’d spent more than twice as many years out of school than I did riding buses, sweating over homework and falling flat on my face in gym class.
Those school years crawled by at the pace of a snail on vacation. But somebody’s been messing with the time-space continuum or the grandfather clocks or something since then because those last 40-some years just whizzed by with this big “whoosh” sound.
Last year, I dinged 65, the Medicare birthday. That was a celebration. My medical insurance rates plummeted, AND restaurants insisted that I take senior discounts. Retirement and more time for naps waited just around the corner.
But nothing in particular happened when I turned 66. It was just there. No kisses. No birthday card packed with 66 dollar bills. No cake—probably because of the risk of a major catastrophe by lighting 66 candles.
I hear that 70, 80, 90 and everything from 100 and after will be full of fanfare and significance. But 66 just kind of sat there, another day like all those other faceless dates on the calendar.
I was so bummed out that I went home and took a nap. Suddenly, 66 felt worth it — even without a Sweet 66 kiss from Laura or anyone else.
If you have an extinguisher standing by, light candles for Burt at news@falmouthoutlook.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.