McCOMB — One of my golfing buddies who is a little older than I am says a lot of things happen to you as you age and “about 95 percent of it is bad.”
On my 74th birthday Tuesday, I didn’t totally agree.
I worked a couple of hours on an Enterprise-Journal editorial page that morning, then drove to Summit to get my driver’s license renewed, played 18 holes of golf in the afternoon and bridge that night.
Not a bad day for a senior citizen. Even after losing at golf and mostly getting bad hands at bridge, I’d still say the day was 95 percent positive. As a former preacher here in McComb used to say when asked how he was: “I’m blessed.”
Also, I hope, I’ve learned a few things in my three score and 10 plus years that a couple of other senior citizens who were in the news last week haven’t.
One is a 72-year-old great-grandmother in Texas who was Tased by a deputy constable after daring him to do just that.
The incident was recorded on the officer’s video camera after he stopped Kathryn Winkfein for driving 60 mph in a 45-mph zone just west of Austin.
A dashboard camera in the deputy’s car shows the 4-foot-11 Winkfein refusing to sign her speeding ticket, getting out of her white pickup truck and cursing at the deputy constable.
“If you don’t step back, you’re going to get Tased,” the officer said. “Go ahead, Tase me,” Winkfein said. “I dare you.” He did, and she fell to the ground screaming.
I figured out a long time ago you don’t argue with people who have badges and guns while they are performing their official duty, and a 72-year-old has no more right to do it than a 20-year-old.
The other case, which was far more serious, involved 88-year-old James von Brunn, the white supremacist and Holocaust denier who is accused of entering the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., with a .22 rifle and killing guard Stephen T. Johns. Von Brunn was then shot by security guards and is in critical condition.
Von Brunn’s problem is that he is a hater.
That’s a character defect that can occur at any age, but it seems to me if a person has that tendency, like other ailments, it intensifies with age.
Jesus Christ taught against hate, and I try to resist hating those with whom I disagree. I hope I never get senile enough to hate.
Or, for that matter, to dare a policeman to Tase me.
Now if those cute waitresses would quit calling me “honey” and “sweetie” and middle-aged men would refer to me as Charlie instead of “Mr. Charlie,” I’d feel younger.
There was a time when the terms of endearment by good-looking female service people would have been welcomed.
Now I know they are a sign of deference to one I considered, when I was their age, to be an old man.
