"The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death." That is from "Time", my favorite song off of Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon. It is appropriate today as it is my birthday and the year I was born was the year that album came out. It reached number one on the Billboard Charts in April and stayed there until 1988. It went back on the charts in 1991 and remains there today. And yes, it is true if you sync it up with the movie The Wizard of Oz, it seems to go together in an eerie way. There is a young man that I went to high school with who committed suicide his freshman year of college that I always think of when I listen to the song "Dark Side of the Moon". He was too sweet for this world.
I was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Horse country. Which is why it means something special to me that I share a special day with horse racing's most famous horse: Secretariat. On the day I was born, Secretariat, also a redhead, was busy making history, being the first horse to win the Triple Crown in twenty-five years at the Belmont Stakes. But he did more than that. You say 31 and 2:24 to anyone in horse racing and they will know exactly what you are talking about. Secretariat won by 31 lengths and ran the race in 2:24 minutes. An amazing record for any race. But Secretariat is a once in a lifetime, or perhaps century, horse. He passed in 1989.
The now legendary band Aerosmith put out there first album, Aerosmith. It had on it "Makin' it" "Mamma Kin", and yes, "Dream On", which would be re-released in 1976 and finally became a hit. No one really noticed this album. Or the band for several years, except for their loyal band of blue jean followers and the city of Boston. It's hard to believe that their most famous song "Dream On" was out for years before it became a hit and got them some attention. But the music world is an odd one.
That year we also lost one of the greatest storytellers in the singer/songwriter/musician category: Jim Croce. He wrote: Don't Mess Around With Jim, Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown, Time in a Bottle, I've Got a Name, Rapid Roy That Stock Car Boy, Car Wash Blues, and One Less Set of Footsteps. He had set up a date to play at a college in Louisiana in December. But that was before he became famous and a "big name". Some people, hell most people, would have cancelled it. But that wasn't who he was. It was a small gig for peanuts and he had to take a tiny plane to get there and it crashed and he died. He left behind a wife, son, and some wonderful music filled with colorful characters and a great beat. My daughter loves the "don't tug on Superman's cape song", which is about what I called it when I was her age, or what the rest of the world knows as "Don't Mess Around With Jim". She even gets the Jim's and Slim's right, which took me years to nail down.
In the news: Roe v. Wade was passed; the Yom Kipur War; the Watergate hearings begin with Nixon exclaiming "I am not a crook."'; US troops were withdrawn from Vietnam and a peace agreement signed; armed members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota; in the Battle of the Sexes on the tennis court, Billy Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs; Richard Pryor burned his face by "free base"; and the Endangered Species Act is Passed. In pop culture: Mick and Keith kicked Brian Jones out of the band; Ben Vereen was killed in a car accident; Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez burned down her boyfriend's house (that was memorable); The Exorcist (I'm scared); Deliverance (Oh, yeah!); Live and Let Live (a Bond movie! Awesome!); The Sting; Jesus Christ Superstar; American Graffiti; The Last Tango in Paris; album "Some Girls" released; "Batdance"; "Crocodile Rock"; "Angie"; and "My Love" (I could personally do without the woah, woah, woahs). Birthdays: Peter the Great; Cole Porter; Les Paul; The Great Soul/Blues singer Jackie Wilson; Patricia Cornwell; Michael J. Fox; Aaron Sorkin; Johnny Depp; Natalie Portman; and last, but never least, Donald Duck.
Now you may wonder what the point of all this was. Well, I sometimes need to remind myself that a lot of cool things (even if they were bad, they were important) and cool people, happened on my birthday. Especially now. I've always been mistaken for someone at least ten years younger than myself until a year ago. Suddenly I started being treated like I was ten years OLDER than I was. I took my daughter to the library and a man (It's always a man. It's a man who asks if when you are due, when you are not pregnant.) asked about my granddaughter. I had my daughter at an older age, but not all that old. I have yet to find a gray hair. How can I possibly look like someone's grandmother? When I went to see The Force with a friend of mine who is 30, the ticket agent asked if she had a student ID. When I stepped up, she saw my AAA card and thought it was an AARP card and said "Oh, you have AARP." My first thought was, of course, do I look that old? Then my thrifty Scots side came out and said who cares what she thinks. These tickets are well over $10. Take the discount. I was just about to open my mouth to agree with her, when she realized her mistake and I had to pay full price. So I got insulted and overcharged. The very young nurse at my doctor's office is pushing the pneumonia shot I've seen on TV that they are aiming at the over 60 crowd. I look in the mirror and I don't see an old woman. My body feels like one because I have fibromyalgia. I have the body of an eighty-year-old sometimes. How did I go from still getting carded for buying alcohol to being treated like a grandmother almost overnight? I'm not ashamed of how old I am. I always said that I would grow old gracefully, but I said that thinking that when I started growing old people would think I was ten years younger that I really was, not ten years older.
So, I grow one year older today. I still don't feel old. Maybe I'm in denial. Maybe I'm just happy with who I am and do not like being stuffed in a box. Especially one marked soon to expire, because it's old. As Freddie said "Who wants to live forever." I sure don't. I'm just not ready to be put up on a shelf. I've got a lot more living left to do. And a daughter who is telling everyone she sees that it is my birthday today and how old I am. We have an agreement to be as honest as possible with each other. When she asked me about my weight, however, I told her that was between me and the doctor's scale. She's happier than me, though to be celebrating my birthday. Kids are wonderful. They keep you young.
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