TURNING 70

Jimmy Swaggart is a good example

The hardest thing to do is get older. It takes a lot of living and bumps and bruises, I should know, I’m old. I became old officially this July 6 at 1:30 pm. As legend has it the doctor had me by my ankles, smacked my ass and said to Mom: “Here’s another boy for Uncle Sam!” I don’t know what he meant but I think he was saying another life to sacrifice in someone else’s war.

As it comes to sacrifices, I have done my part in both time and money, not to mention energy, especially for my kids. There you do such things in joy, they get what they need and you provide it. But there is another kind of sacrifice that I don’t understand, the call to arms. Why are some people in this country so willing to send off the young to die, is the bravado that strong?

Old men from both sides of the ocean pick a fight with each other and make war, one they personally will not fight, and so they send your sons and grandsons off to fight it. Even the young women get off their patriotic rocks and fight now. I love this country, but this country is made up of the future: the young should never be so arbitrarily sent off to war. Forget the cost, you will pay for it, the old men have fat paychecks and nice pensions.

Many years ago Dad was watching TV on our new color console by Magnavox, just a few days old and as he was watching I happened to pass the living room and one of my sisters changed the channel on him. It upset me and so I changed it back to his channel, thus beginning the outbreak of hostilities. It was a four front war for me (four sisters) who all ganged up on me at once, and when it was over, there was no Dad anywhere to be seen, he was down in the basement watching the old Black and white set, I was bleeding from scratches and my shirt breast pocket was ripped and my glasses broken! That is what war always gets you, most cost and destruction.

After 70 years I’ve become cynical of everything ever told to me and taught. I’ve become suspicious of politicians, they should be changed as often as a babies diaper, and for the same reason, the church has left me no reason to think they can govern my spiritual life when they can’t master their own, and even the old morality they taught me in school is under a dark and heavy cloud.

Change s good as long as we grow from it. The days of persecuting homosexual love is over, now we are all free to love who we want. The self-anointed will have to deal with it best they can, until someone in their family decides: “Yes, gay marriage is what I want.”