I'm nearly as old as the adage, "you're only as old as you feel". Well, that's how I felt this morning, anyway. I started out the day feeling quite ancient. Like maybe I should go look at retirement homes, reserve my cemetery plot and buy some Depends®. Maybe I should begin writing my memoirs, before my memory loss gets any worse.

Well, sigh! Where does time go, anyway? It seems to be disappearing faster than the Republicans from Capital Hill. I just had another birthday. I am now officially fifty-three years old!

I Googled my name and came up with a hundred pages of links for antiques. (oops! I forgot, Google® has forbidden the use of the word Google® as a verb!) Oh, never mind, I'm old and senile therefore I can verbalize any word I want.

The funny thing is that this one specific birthday will never come again...well neither will any of the other birthdays...but this one is sorta special. I was born in 1953, which was fifty-three years ago, which means I'm fifty-three years old. (Sorry, but in my senility I found this fact to be fascinating.)

How many 1953 automobiles did I see while driving around in the city yesterday? Let's see...uh...none! So, if I were a car, I would now be in that great junkyard in the sky. If I were a dog, I would be three hundred and seventy-one years old--and very dusty. If I were a machine, I would be obsolete. And if I were a computer I would be as big as a small room.

And on top of that, I'm the grandmother of three. Two of them came with my marriage to their grandfather, and the other one is a special gift from my son. I love them all equally. I never use the term Step-Mom or Step-Grandma. It just doesn't apply to my relationship with my children and grandchildren. I wonder were the term came from anyway. I think they should be called free children and grandchildren, meaning they are an added bonus to a marriage. Like those buy-one-get-one-free deals.

When my daughter was in the hospital for her second C-Section and my youngest grandson, the doctor asked me if I had her by C-section. I laughed and said, "No, I got her the easy way...I married her dad."

And I am thinking today that my granddaughter who is thirteen, and my two grandsons, ages seven and six, have never listened to, nor even seen an eight track tape, they've never watched black & white television, never used a manual typewriter, never heard of a beta VCR, or carbon paper. I watched men walk on the moon long before these children walked across my 'just washed' kitchen floor.

My granddaughter gave me that 'blond' look when I told her about how, when I was growing up, our telephone was connected through a party line.

She was thinking Par-tay! so I explained to her that, "No this was NOT a good thing" because it meant several neighbors were on the same phone line and if someone else was using their phone, then you had to wait until they finished, before you could make your call. And if they really got mean about it they could keep their receiver off the hook all day and no one could use the phone.

She gave me an even blonder look and said, 'Well, duhhh, why didn't you just use your cell?" Well, for a moment there, I felt the same way my grandma must have felt when she told me about the Civil War.

Then I noticed that this grand-teen was wearing my wife-beater, my earrings, and reeking of my perfume. But the real revelation came when she asked to borrow my new Nickelback CD.

Is it my imagination, or is the gap getting smaller with each new generation? I'm only seeing a slight crack where there used to be a great chasm.

I guess I could wait a while before I do the retirement home, cemetery plot and Depends® thing. Right now, I need to figure out a way to make the grand kids go home.

I plan on hooking up with their absolute most fave person this weekend...

They call him "Grandpa." I call him "da bomb".

Leeuna Foster
http://www.southernfriedwriters.com