Dealing with a lot of birthday wishes this morning and advice not to feel old upon hitting the age of 67. Believe me, I don't. Even though I'm having trouble walking due to foot and knee problems, the rest of me thinks I'm 24.
As I've written here lately, the older I get, the more annoyed by friends who hit what seems like an advanced age to them — I know one guy who started doing this at 50 — and start acting like their lives and/or careers are nearly over.
I just do not understand why people do that to themselves. Nature will make you old enough without you helping it along.
Things change in this world. They always have, always will. They changed between the time I was 18 and 21. As I tell all my friends who are around my age, you have two choices: You can change as the world changes and accept what's different. Or you can moan about how the world you knew is gone and you're a dinosaur in the current one.
Years ago, I was friends with a great comic book artist who was super-ultra-mega sensitive about the fact that younger men (and even — gasp! — women) were invading his field. He kept using the "d" word, constantly referring to himself as a dinosaur, thinking everyone in the industry regarded him as one. Editors still loved his work but they (and all his friends, including me) got a little sick of him setting himself up for extinction.
Once, I honestly praised his latest job and he shrugged and said, "I don't know why I bother. I should just crawl into the tar pits and get it over with." Since then, I've tried real hard not to do that. And now, I find myself in an interesting year for me in terms of fiftieth anniversaries. Fifty years ago, it was 1969…a year when an awful lot of things changed in my life. Taking them in no particular order…
1969 was the year I graduated from High School, which meant that my daily routine changed, I lost a whole set of friends and I could no longer think of myself as a kid who was intent on someday becoming a professional writer. (Though I graduated in June, the 50 Year Reunion of my class is tonight. I'm not attending.)
1969 was the year I decided to do something about actually becoming a professional writer and began putting my work out there and, happily, selling things I'd written — not everything, of course, but enough to keep at it. So this year marks fifty years not only as a professional writer but as a professional freelance writer, which is like being the world's oldest mayfly. Mayflies have a life expectancy of about 27 hours, which is even less than members of the Trump cabinet.
1969 was the year I got to know the man who went on to become my best friend in the male category and still holds that title: Sergio Aragonés. We met in '68 but didn't have enough contact for him to learn my name until 1969.
1969 was the year I met Jack Kirby. The other day on Stu's Show, I misspoke and referred to Jack as my "mentor." By some definition, I guess he was and I sure learned a lot from him, as much about being a human being as being a writer, when I went to work for him the following year. But I don't like that word "mentor" because it's usually claimed by someone who had a relationship with a person of greatness and they want everyone to assume they inherited some of that greatness just because they talked with the guy or got him coffee.
1969 was the year I became financially independent from my parents and paid off the mortgage on the house in which we lived. 1969 was the year I was accepted into U.C.L.A. 1969 was the year a young lady decided she liked me enough to terminate my virginity. (That may be Too Much Information for some of you but that's a pretty big, life-changing moment for most of us.)
So I have trouble accepting that 1969 was half a century ago. Seems more like a decade ago, maybe two at most. I don't believe in lying about your age or trying to disguise yourself as someone much, much younger but you don't have to feel you're the age on your drivers license. You also don't have to feel the way someone thinks you're supposed to feel at your age. Me, I feel 24 —
— except when my knee replacement is giving me trouble. That's when I think they stole mine out of the Triceratops skelton at the Natural History Museum. It's the only way in which I ever feel like a dinosaur.