We all age and mature at different speeds. My having turned seventy-seven this week has been one in a long series of experiences involving both mind and body. Aging happens so gradually that we don’t usually notice the increased effort required to blow out the candles as the years pass, and, after age fifty, our lungs get a bit crankier and whisper, “Hey, what was THAT all about?” in that progressive climb toward our golden years. I do remember that thirty was a milestone, and after blowing out the candles on that birthday, hearing one of my older friends saying, “It’s all uphill from here on, pal.”
America is a country where the terrors, large and small, of aging seem to be in at least a third of television commercials and magazine ads, so that life can become a competition to delay decrepitude for as along as we can, while we view ourselves in mirrors, sometimes dimming the lights a bit to hide any signs of infirmity in those extra wrinkles and sagging cheeks (the ones on our faces and the other ones farther down).
I do resent the widespread presumption that, because we have silver or white hair, we are automatically compromised mentally and physically in the eyes of too many around us. As someone who taught high school classes for thirty-five years, I can say with some confidence that if you want to work with or criticize someone who is physically and intellectually compromised, then help teenagers everywhere. They need all the aid we can provide in eschewing, among other things, those sharp steel facial inserts that can be quite dangerous during electrical storms.
“Middle age is when you’re faced with two temptations, and you choose the one that will get you home at 9 o’clock.” Ronald Reagan
In any case, aging is relative and can affect people in many different ways. The one advantage I already relish about aging is that, as a rule, “younger” people (those forty to sixty) will generally open doors for me to go in or out, based, I believe, upon my having silver hair. If I have my cane with me, I own any space that doesn’t already have someone in a wheelchair. JB
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” Marjorie Barstow
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
View all posts by John →
