Kid Turns 70 And nobody cares.

Weekly Standard ^ | 1/29/07 | Joseph Epstein

[Valin]

Age and deceit, beat youth and skill...everytime.

[NavVet]

Dagumit. Reading that made me miss Matlock.

[Liberty Valance]

70 is the new 63.

[isom35]

felt like 70 years passed just reading all that.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

At 70, this guy certainly is not short of words.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Death is not what one fears, but the manner by which death comes is. To die unexpectedly in one's sleep is a blessing. To linger without knowing who one is for years in a nursing home is Hell.

[Constitutions Grandchild]

"Kid Turns 70 and nobody cares"

While I can relate to many of his remarks -- sounds to me like the reason no one cares is because he's so "in" to himself, there's no room for anyone else (or they fell asleep an hour into his monologue). He needs to get out more. While reaching 70 is a "gift" he can celebrate, he probably should have left the essay in his diary.

[Mygirlsmom]

"My longing to meet Robin Williams, Emma Thompson, and Pete Townsend is roughly the same, I should guess, as their longing to meet me."

I Love it!

[IronJack]

Sometimes these kinds of internal ramblings are an interesting window into a writer's soul, and the reader discovers that he shares a view. I found this one pretty wordy, but I suspect that at 70, there's a lot of landscape visible through that window.

[RadioCirca1970]

Age is what you make of it...

James Hylton is gonna race the Duels to get into Daytona.
He is 72 and was NASCAR's Rookie of the year in 66!

Imagine going 191mph with his left blinker on the whole time....kidding!

[NicknamedBob]

He's got a few years on me, so I'm not quite there yet with his surreal disconnection from life.

But I have a hunch I never will be. The kid inside of me is still rambunctious and irrepressible, and just amazed at the wonders of the world revealed every day.

[wildcatf4f3]

marvelous

[WVNan]

there's a lot of landscape visible through that window.

There is.

[Tax-chick]

Bump! My father is 70.

[Mr. Jeeves]

At 70, one could be an unusually young and vigorous US Senator. ;)

[Democratshavenobrains]

My dad was born in 1937 too and he was also too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. He wasn't drafted but he enlisted for a year in the Air Force Reserve and went to Texas.

[I see my hands]

Youth is wasted on the young, wherewithal is wasted on the old.

[Old Professer]

"One of the most efficient ways to decrease this fear, I've found, is to welcome death, at least a little, and this growing older can cause one to do--or at least it has me, sometimes."

I read this several times and the only way it makes sense is if the underlined "and" is replaced with "as."

Other than what is likely just a typo, I really like the painting although it has too many brush strokes and not enough swashes of color; worse, I don't have a wall big enough to hang it on.

[NicknamedBob]

"He wasn't drafted but he enlisted for a year in the Air Force Reserve and went to Texas."

We can fabricate some marvelous records for him if you'd like.

Now we know how to give it lots of "truthiness."

[Polybius]

A wonderful period, middle age, so nondescript and imprecise, extending perhaps from one's late 30s to one's late 60s,

For the average American male, "middle age" begins at 25 and ends at 50 ...... Give or take a month or two.

American men now live just five years less, on average, than women, closing a gap that once approached eight years. Male life expectancy hit a record 75.2 in 2004,