> On May 9, 2016, at 11:32 PM, Deepa Mohan <[email protected]> wrote: > > I am in my 60's and What Thaths Said :D >
Me too. I didn’t finish reading it. Got about 1/3 through. I became a volunteer firefighter at age 55. I’m 63 now. In order to become fully qualified I had to take 24 classes ranging in length from 3 hours to 2 days, and had to pass several practical exams, including live-fire exercises at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy. That process took two years. I have since responded to more than 120 incidents, most of them small but some of them involving 1 or more houses completely engulfed in flames. I can get into my gear, including air pack & with radio on and set to the proper channel, in four minutes flat. I can pass all physical fitness tests. Some of the young hot shots on my truck can get into their gear in little more than 2 minutes. I am older and slower, that’s true. I'll hit mandatory retirement age about 18 months from now. But I intend to remain fully qualified until then. I’m to publish a new novel this summer, and another one will follow that, and I think they’ll be my best yet. Novel-writing is another activity I took up after reaching age 40. I was 48 years old when I published my first one. All this may of course be written off as me whistling past the graveyard, in denial about my own mortality and obvious decline. But in the words of Monty Python, I’m not dead yet. And life is indeed too short to waste reading self-wankery [1]. jrs 1. Maybe my description of my firefighting qualifications is self-wankery, but at least it’s relatively short.
