A Eulogy for my youth

I have spent the last two weeks in serious and contemplative study of the virtues of various new vehicles.  My lovely little daughter being so slight in stature, commands relatively copious amounts of accoutrement and quite frankly our little Ford Focus can’t handle it all (nor can my back).  As you may be wondering, no doubt with an intense look of terror, yes, a mini-van is up there in the running.  Alas, I am young no more.  Therefore, I include for you a eulogy for my own youth.

Friends, Southerners, Countrymen…Lend me your ears.  We come not to praise my youth, but to bury it like so many discarded hole-y socks.  Life is beautiful, like my daughter’s eyes.  Life is wonderful, like my wife’s care for me.  But life is different.  It no longer has summer days when school was an afterthought and my main concern was how to enjoy the carefree day without getting bored.  They have been replaced with days that are fraught with thoughts of the next upcoming life event.  Days though free they may be, that are still tempered with the ever-present “Monday” back in the grind.  Where certain dreams just cannot be attained anymore (rock guitar god?  not happening), yet these narrowing horizons are expanded by the new things in life that at certain times, I frankly did not think were possible.  I was a late bloomer, getting married at 29 and at times I wondered if I would find that special someone and I wondered if my dream of a family would come true.  It has, and life is wonderful.  But my youth is dead.  Forgive my rambling as I review, as the blues classic denotes, “the things that I used to do”.

No longer can I wake up early on Saturdays to re-enact the Normandy D-Day invasion with my G.I. Joes.  I can’t spread the entire living room floor with Legos anymore (my child may pick them up).  I wonder what else in my house represents a choking hazard (other than NCSU and the Cubs).  I can’t leave dishes in the sink until they change colors.  Spring cleaning is no longer the ONLY cleaning.  Vienna sausages with a cereal chaser must wait until I’m left alone for a night.  My shirt tail should really be tucked in more often…really.  I have to, like “groom” myself more.  Not just to obtain a higher standard, but because there are more areas that need grooming.  I can’t roam through the woods anymore entertained by my imagination and the crumple of leaves under my feet.  I feel the need to carry a cell phone with me because someone may really need me.  The bank is in my wallet for 30 years!  30 years!  I have a wallet!  The decisions I make now have longer living ramifications and they affect others whom I would gladly take a beating and a bullet for.  Barbara Walters is starting to look good to me.  I understand the time-value of money and relish said understanding.  I’ve used a rotary phone…I have one in my house.  I was sore the day after bowling on the Wii.  I remember being hyped about the release of the original Mario Brothers.  I pay attention when my blood pressure is taken and shake my head in approval at a good number.  I know what a good blood pressure number should be.  I look forward to coffee and a newspaper…My youth…has ceased to be.

You may be asking yourself how in the heck am I supposed to understand this rambling, disjointed crap-like post?  “What killed your youth?”  The answer is simple…It was when I heard myself say “Let’s upgrade to the EX package, those power sliding doors are niiiiiice!”