Last week Konnie talked about her menagerie of pets, and
mostly about how most of them are senior pets. Lakota being the exception.
Around here, I have one pet. And Patches isn’t quite a senior, yet; he turned five
this last weekend. I can’t believe it’s been nearly five years since I got him,
but it is.
I also can’t believe it’s been over ten years since Tom died
and I moved in here, but it has.
And my next post will come just two days before Konnie, and
I turn sixty-two. Yeah, I can’t believe that either. Though it is pretty hard
to think of Konnie and me as seniors when we don’t look our age. People still
get shocked over how old I am, and who can blame them when I still have a mass
of brown hair?
Yes, I do have some white hair, as I have mentioned before,
but it is still just one streak down the back. A streak I can easily hide by
putting my hair in a ponytail, which I usually do to keep my hair out of my eyes
while I work.
I think I mentioned not too long ago when a coworker expressed
shock that I was older than her.
Then there is the post I saw on Facebook where the person
posting asked, “Have you ever gotten up in the morning, looked in the mirror,
and thought that can’t be right?”
I didn’t respond on Facebook but my initial response to the
question was, “Every frickin time!”
Though I have to admit it isn’t because of my age, which I’m
sure is what the poster was talking about. No, I have been feeling the image in
my mirror is incorrect for my entire life.
This
is something I’ve mentioned before, because I can’t stand looking in mirrors
for that very reason. I never see myself, I see Konnie.
I also have a whopping two mirrors in my house. A mirrored
curio shelf in my spare room, which I avoid looking at (it was a gift), and the bathroom mirror
that came with the place. I avoid looking in it too, as much as I can.
So back to the original question. Does my mirror image make
me think, “That can’t be right?” Yes. Is it because of how old I appear in the
mirror? Absolutely not!
Which is why I did not respond to that post.
A post I did respond to was about Harry Potter. The poster
pointed out that Harry was born in 1980 and started at Hogwarts in 1991, and
asked the readers to post about what they were doing, or what significant
things happened in their real lives at key points in the Harry Potter universe.
Well, right off the bat, Konnie and I turned 18 in 1980. So,
I wrote that down then I considered the year 1991. Well, the First Gulf War was
going on then, that’s for sure. How do I know this? Simple, my second born came
along in June of ’92, nine months after Tom came back from that little skirmish.
Tom participated in Operation Desert Storm and Brandon was
part of Operation Desert Stork.
In another comment on that thread, a lady mentioned she was born
in 1960, the same year as James and Lily. I responded that puts me two years
younger than James and Lily, which means they were twenty when Harry was born.
At 20, Konnie and I had barely finished high school.
Another date in Harry Potter lore is May 2, 1998, the Battle
of Hogwarts. That would mean during the battle I was preparing for the sixth birthday
of my second born, which would have been in June, and the first birthday of my
twins in July. My final baby came into the world on Halloween of ’99, can it
really be that long ago?
But it has.
Like when I talked to a lady the other day, the subject
came to the bad weather we’ve endured. I mentioned living through a
couple of big ones that hit mostly Florida back in the day and she tried to think
of a couple more recent hurricanes it might have been.
She was way off, mentioning some big ones that happened in this
century. Yeah, try Andrew and Hugo. Those were the two
that happened when I lived in Virginia from ’87 – ‘96. You know when Tom
was in the Navy. Way back in the last century.
Man, that makes me feel old. Most of my life happened in the
last century. But it wasn’t like the lady I was talking to was born in this
century, she wasn’t. She’s in her late 40’s early 50’s.
Anyway, happy writing everyone!