Today is a big day in The Flat Overlooking The Vals River.  It is the wife’s birthday today, ushering the twenty-nine days of the year where she gets to say that she is older than me.  For the next month I have to lay down my mantle of patriarchal authority and defer to her in all things because, you know, we have to respect our elders and all that.  (For reasons of health and safety (mine) I can’t tell you how old she is (she actually reads this rag), but I can tell you that I am thirty-one.)

As I watch my dearly beloved advance in years I sit back and once more appreciate the fact of my youth.  Some embittered old person once said that youth is wasted on the young.  I have decided to stop wasting mine.  I am going to follow the wisdom of the book of Ecclesiastes which says, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes…” (Eccl 11v9, KJV). Continue reading “On enjoying one’s youth” →