Not Dead Yet

There's been a lot of news coverage about Dara Torres, the forty-one year old Olympic swimmer. Everybody's acting like it's a miracle she can even get into the pool at her advanced age, and I'm thinking, "Wait a minute! I'm older than she is! What does that make me, chopped liver?"

So then I was watching the equestrian events, and there was this Canadian guy jumping. (Okay, okay, he wasn't jumping; the horse was doing the jumping, and he was riding the horse.) And they were talking about how this guy was sixty-one years old, and this was his ninth Olympics. (Ian Millar, by the way, if you're interested. And when he takes off his riding helmet, he looks like he's around forty.) And then I discovered that there is a Japanese rider who is sixty-seven.

I feel better now. People older than me are competing at the Olympics.

But you know; I don't feel old, at all. When I think about being forty-five, it just boggles my mind. How the hell did I get to be forty-five? I can't possibly be that old! Jeezus Christ, fifty is right around the corner! What the hell?!

Is it just me, or does everybody feel that way?