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When I was a boy, I would always hear old people complain about how fast the years went by. How quickly the kids grew up.

I couldn’t understand what they were yammering about. It seemed like forever just to get done with 2nd grade!

Nowadays I often think about how fast the years went by. How quickly my kids grew up.

You can’t even imagine being old when you are young. It seems so distant. And once you get there, you can’t even comprehend how quickly you arrived.

Things start to go. Eyesight, hearing, balance; nothing is as it was. At least I’m still witty. Or so I would like to think.

I never took injury or illness seriously. My approach was always, ‘It will eventually go away.’

And until now it always did.

It’s only normal to think about dying. Is there a heaven? A hell?

Not according to my Grandmother. I asked her when I was four years old where we go when we die.

“Go?” she said. “I’ll tell you where you go. You go six feet in the ground and get covered up with dirt! That’s where you go!!When you’re dead, you’re dead! You get buried! That’s it!”

Yikes.

But if those places do happen to exist, I would like to believe that I have earned a spot in the nicer accommodations. But I’m in no rush, because as soon as I get there I just know my Mom is gonna start yelling at me again…

I felt pretty much immortal until I was 28. Riding my bicycle down Flatbush Avenue to work during morning rush hour, I attempted a left onto Livingston Street; my front tire got caught in something and I went flying.

I landed on my chin. As I was attempting to get up, blood streaming, the inside of my chin hanging down, I noticed a line of cars speeding towards my skull.

So much for immortality.

But magically, every car turned left 10 feet before impact. This was because I had had the good sense to fall into a left-turn-only lane. I may not have felt immortal any longer, but I sure felt lucky…

It’s comforting to me that my kids are all grown. They have their own families to help them through any tough times.

It would be so much worse if I was forced to leave the scene when they were still young.

I should know better than anyone; my Dad died when I was seven. And I lost my Mom when I was only two.

But then she found me, wandering around Central Park with some strange woman holding my hand, and went on to live a very long life…

Time to expand my brain, while I still have the chance. I have always hated museums, so I decided that now’s the time to go and learn stuff. Get some culture. So off my wife and I went.

And damn if I didn’t learn something after all:

I learned that I was right all along. I hate museums.

The first encounter I ever had with death came when I was five. For a reason forever lost to time, my Mom allowed my older brother and I to have a pet turtle.

We kept Thomas in a fish bowl on the table. One day we noticed he wasn’t in his fish bowl anymore. We searched the apartment, to no avail.

Five months later, my Mom was sweeping underneath the kitchen stove, and out came a rather large pile of dust.

She picked it up. I noticed four tiny, webbed feet dangling beneath it.

At least I know I’m not gonna go like that.

My children are none too pleased when I mention old age and the inevitable. They do not understand.

As Orson Welles once said,

“Every old person knows what it’s like to be young, but no young person knows what it’s like to be old.”

Very astute fellow, that Orson Welles…