Youth is lousy preparation for old age.
Everything boys learn from ages 5 to 30 is likely to result in scores of accidents, dozens of injuries, multiple trips to the emergency room and death by 40.
Being young teaches us all the wrong habits and attitudes that might otherwise help us survive if we hope to reach adulthood.
Our early years are blessed with youthful grace and effortless agility, a combo that does nothing to prepare for middle age. We mostly learn the wrong things. Being young is terrible training for those who’d like to grow old.
When in our prime (18 to 28) we might see a car speeding toward us and respond with quiet, unthinking reflex reactions. As the auto leaps the curb we do a sprightly two-hand cartwheel across the hood, spin around in mid-air and land lightly on the sidewalk followed by a single pirouette, a small bow, and quiet pride at not having spilled our beer.
Oh to be 25 again! At 65 the same scenario would have terminated at the “car speeding toward us” intro.
Being young, strong and nimble as an Olympic gymnast may have once saved our life, but also repeatedly taught us lessons that poorly serve us in later decades. We were instilled with not-altogether-false images of ourselves as equal parts Tarzan, John Wayne, Mercury and Evil Knievel as we slashed through the days and years of our youth.
We learn by age 15 that we are smart, tough, invincible, bulletproof and immune to consequences. But soon enough we become shadows of what we were.
By 65 we are equal parts Joe Biden, Willie Nelson, Methuselah and Bozo the Clown. We are soft, brittle, forgetful and vulnerable to everything from pianos falling out seventh story windows to cell tower gamma rays zapping through our tinfoil helmets and burning up memory banks in the cerebral cortex.
See the problem? See the big yellow sign up ahead that says “DANGER ROUGH TERRAIN”?
You certainly didn’t see it half a century ago, which led to overconfidence. That’s why you’re in a hospital today with tubes up your nose.
You walked off a curb this afternoon, stepped on a pebble the size of a raisin, twisted your ankle and fell on your shoulder because your reflexes and agility have failed. You’d gotten older but not smarter, a promise your parents warned you about, repeatedly, 50 years ago.
Maybe at age 10 you can ride your bicycle (“Look ma! No Hands!”) down a steep hill, heave a spiraling football off toward an imaginary end zone, then pedal furiously to catch the ball on the five yard line and cruise in for the touchdown while blowing a bubblegum bubble. Wow!
But that’s a misleading experience to rely on when you get your first motorcycle at age 50.
Playing tackle football with no equipment against teenagers who weigh 140 pounds is an exciting afternoon when you’re 17. But if the message is “Now that I’m 45 I think I’ll join a rugby team,” you’re probably suffering from a concussion 30 years ago.
Do you entertain lingering memories tinged with euphoria at having outrun cops in your ‘59 Chevy when you were 20? It’s best to get those memories expunged, with a lobotomy if necessary, because I guarantee you’ll never outrun a cop again, not even on your motorcycle. Certainly not in your wheelchair.
Having your daughter get involved in ballet is bound to have her overestimate her ability to avoid mud puddles, or hop an electric fence. On the other hand, a ballet background might some day help get her through a DUI field sobriety test.
Youngsters assume stairways are exercise equipment: Zip down three or four steps, then leap over the next eight stairs to the landing. Turn right, repeat.
But now we descend stairs as if they’re cunning traps; we suspect piano wire strung across the top step and we clutch the bannister hard and tight, leaving eighth-inch deep fingerprints in it all the way down.
We do this because we are old and have acquired much wisdom. When we were kids, momentarily losing our balance was easily corrected by slouching one way or the other, or twisting in a half circle to right the ship.
Losing our balance today means falling down backward on a flight of stairs so long and steep we’ll be dead before we hit the landing. So we grimace and dig our fingers back into the bannister.
Final word: How happy were you at age 50 that you learned to smoke cigarettes when you were 15?
Tom Hine and TWK agree that Sunday’s Daily Journal won’t be the same without Jim Shields. Jim’s gone, his column is gone, and filling the empty space on top of Page 5 will be no easy job. He was smart, tough, and most always right. I’ll miss my page mate.
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