After my prior post, you may all conclude that I am the most self-absorbed person in the world. Ok, I am. No one but me would search endlessly for the text of a post that I myself wrote. What vanity, what an ego. I should be shot! Someone (I am so self-centered that I don't remember who) posted about turning 30, and then we had a series of posts on turning other age numbers, and I knew that I had written on that for Evian the new father's 30th birthday last year when the new baby was in the pre-conception but getting ready to rock and roll stage. Evian took pity on me and took time out from his new baby duties (by the way, we prayed for all in church a couple of weeks in a row now) to tell me when his birthday was. Thus I was able to narrow my here to fore fruitless search of digest after digest (do you have idea of how many digest there are?) and I found it! I realize no one care but me but I often post to amuse myself. Sp in an egotistical move akin to hosting one's retrospective, I post my original post from 21 March 2000 on the subject of turning 30 and the aging process: (those easy bored or shocked my my utter grandiose lack of embarrassment about hunting up and posting my own old post can skip this; it's not very good, but it means something to me with baseball season back and looking forward to seeing some good friends in a few weeks, And thanks Evian, for having the grace to help me out) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 04:24:48 -0500 From: Vince Lavieri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Evian's birthday ... Child! NJC evian piteously wrote: > I share mine with Elton John and Aretha this Saturday, and since I am > turning 30, I feel so old melancholy about it, I could puke.... Lather was 30 years old today, they took away all of his toys, his mother sent newspaper clippings to him 'bout his old friends who stopped being boys... I turned 30 in the predawn mist of time (ok, 17 years ago) and it was at confirmation camp; yes, with large groups of 7th and 8th graders, engaged in the teaching of catechetical material, I turned a very lonely 30. So I brought our parish's phonograph (this story involves many ancient artifacts, including me) and a Jefferson Airplane album (when vinyl ruled) on the appointed day, and played "Lather" over and over and over but Lather still finds it a nice thing to do to lie about nude in the sand, making mountains that look like bumps, and thrashing the air with his hands... My confirmands took pity on me and told me that I was still worthwhile. But wait, old Lather's productive you know, he produces the finest of sounds, with drumsticks on either side of nose, snorting the best licks in town. And they sang the Lather song with me and then hoisted my cut-offs (with me not in them) up the flag pole as a birthday salute. I should have told him, no, you're not old, and I should have let him go on, smiling, baby boy. Now all these years later, 30 - was I ever that young? But consider: it is worse to be turning 36, the year in which you become closer to 50 than 20... consider it is worse to be in your 40s (as I am, still vainly trying to claim 'middle 40s') where eyesight diminishes (I need contacts and glasses to read) and no one looks at you as anything more than a graying figure of many earth revolutions... or: the best is yet to come! Tonight I did yet another in a series of kick-ass step aerobics/kick boxing classes, doing things that I couldn't do, at 40, or 30, or 20, and in my callow youth I never had all of Joni's albums (which I do now, although at 20 I had 2 out of 3!)... and I can, and this is most important, Evian, gather together with friends that I have known for 30+ years, with people who I have known and have known me through so many of the days of our lives, and we no longer try to impress each other, or have to explain everything to each other, because we know, we've been there for each other, we know all about each other, the dumb things we've done, the grandiose visions, the different affectations and things we did to be cool and now embarrass us, we know all of each other's spouses and former spouses and loves of our lives, and our failures, weaknesses, mistakes, strengths, and essential goodness, and how contentment arises in being with people with whom one shares so much of life. Time, is on my side, yes it is... Age is a bastard thing, aging is worse, but the gift of time with friends is the most wonderful blessing of all and I measure a large part of the quality of my life by the friends that I have that go way, ay back with me. And it takes time to get that, and it is good. When I go a baseball game with my buds this year, we'll have about 148 years of human life there which makes us sound old, but about 108 of those years have been spent in being friends with each other. You can't get that on the cheap... old friends... So the birthday, dear Evian, is a progression to the point where you can have your friends for more years, and all that is good in the relationships that span the lives of the parties. And who was it that said, "life is for learning"? This trip down memory lane with accompanying boring sermon is the down side of age for me, I have to tell these pointless stories, so forget all I said (like everyone does) and just have a happy birthday, big guy! (the Rev) Vince
