On Turning 50

Believe it or not, I actually did start this blog on my birthday (first paragraph, retained as written December 15th), but got "busy", and here I am, a month later. Wow. And I am here now because Eric gave me one last kick in the butt to get me blogging again. Like an (50-year) old car that won't start, and you give it one last try in hopes of sparking life. Thanks, Eric.

I have another blog that I was going to post in this space which I have been working on for sometime (in my head), but as it just so happens, I just turned half-a-century old about 6 hours ago, and I think it is a milestone worth reflecting upon. I was already considering this when I received an e-card from my brother this morning with just such a suggestion. Besides, this way, with another blog in my back pocket, maybe it won't be two months until the next one.

As I look back over 50 years, I marvel at how the world has changed. I used to hear the old "when I was your age" stories from my parents, and now here I am telling them to my kids, and I imagine they are going just as unappreciated.

So, in no particular order, and by no means an exhaustive list, when I was a kid:

• No microwave ovens. I made my poached eggs in boiling water on the stove. Took longer, but they tasted better. I now have a microwave egg poacher that does two eggs in a minute, but if I have the time, I still prefer the boiling water method.
  
  
• No answering machines, call waiting, caller ID, or cell phones. If you needed to get ahold of somebody, you'd better hope that they are home and not on the phone. Funny story about that. My dad (see A Day Late) was a doctor, and as such was occasionally on call. On one such night, unbeknownst to him, I was downstairs talking to my girlfriend on the phone. So after two hours of busy signals, the hospital had to call the phone company to have them break into the line so they could reach the good doctor with various medical emergencies that needed his attention. Needless to say, I was in a tiny bit of trouble. All this to say, that would never happen today, because 1) call waiting would have clicked in, and 2) caller ID would have told me who it was, and 3) he would undoubtedly have a cell phone and/or a pager anyway.
  
  
• No remote control. I am old enough to remember having to get up and change the channel on the TV. And of course, no cable, so I had to get up to change to any of four channels. Oh, the humanity!
  
  Update - sorry, there were five channels - ABC, CBS, NBC, KMSP, and PBS. I don't want to make it sound worse than it was. I forgot about PBS. Understandable, since I never watched it. I grew up before Sesame Street, but somehow I still learned my alphabet.
  
  
• No 24-hour news channel. Thank God. So if someone went missing in Aruba, or the pandas in China weren't mating, there was a fighting chance we didn't hear about it.
  
  
• No VCR, DVR, or Tivo. If you wanted to watch something on any of those four channels, you had to be home when it was on. Nowadays I can just tell my Tivo what shows I like, and it will record them, and I can watch them at my leisure. I can also get on the internet anywhere in the world and tell the Tivo in my basement to record something. I remember seeing a Tivo demonstration in the Best Buy employee cafeteria, when it was first coming out and we were introducing them to our stores. I remember saying something like, "Wow, it can record shows when I'm not home. What a concept. I think my VCR can do that already. This will never catch on." So don't come to me for technology stock tips.
  
  
• No DVDs, no videos. You wanted to see a movie, you went to the theater. You wanted to see it again, you went to the theater again. I once saw "American Graffiti" seven times in one day at the Southtown theater.
  
  
• No iPods. Music was somewhat less than portable in those days. I remember having a tape deck about the size of a toaster with one earplug. Audio heaven.
  
  
• No e-mail, no chat. If you wanted to talk to your friends, you had to call them, or heaven forbid, go outside and play. Or if you wanted to communicate with someone across town or across the country or across the world, you called or wrote a letter. I remember writing many a letter (OK, maybe a few letters) home from college, and getting letters in return. Nowadays, if I want to talk to Betsy in Fargo, I just call her cell phone, or I can get on iChat and say "hey, wassup". And if NDSU did not have bandwidth restrictions (for obvious reasons), we could even video chat. Amazing.
  
  
• No internet. Homework involved looking it up in our set of World Book Encyclopedias (Encyclopedii?) filled with static information as of 1963(?) on a finite number of topics. Today, I can go on Google right now and find out the life span of the female tsetse fly (90-100 days).
  
  
• No video games. When I was a kid, if I we wanted to play baseball, we could choose between the empty lot at the end of Mt. Normandale Curve, or Wakeley's front yard, or football in our front yard or Peck's front yard, or street hockey in Johnson's driveway. Nowadays, when kids want to play baseball, football or hockey, they can choose between Playstation, XBox or Nintendo. No wonder we have an obesity problem (yes, I said we).
  
  
• No drive thru tellers, fast food, dry cleaners, drug stores. You had to actually get out of your car to engage in commerce, no matter what the weather.
  
  
• Last but not least, (OK, maybe least), I am old enough to remember when they showed music videos on MTV. It really happened. Honest.
  

OK, time to get serious. This may sound odd to many of you who had your life put together much earlier than I, and those of you who have known what you were going to do with your life since the age of five. But in a weird way, now that I am 50, I feel like it is time to stop screwing around and grow up and act like an adult. Not even kidding. Sure, I wish I had my act together when I was 20, but I did not. And when I was five, I wanted to be a race car driver. The closest I got to that was 115 mph down Nesbitt Avenue in my dad's Chevy Kingswood station wagon (don't tell mom).

Instead, I am now 25 years in the computer programming racket only because of a chance reading of a "Data Processing Trainee" help wanted ad. Yes, I literally picked a career out of a Sunday paper in October 1981. No regrets, understand, it has been a wild ride, and it has kept me gainfully employed and provided for my family for the last 25 years. But purposes and goals are cool too. So now that I'm fifty, I'm down with that. That's all I'm saying.

OK, time to get spiritual. Turning 50 also makes me think that I am closer to the end than to the beginning. Not to be morbid, but it is a rare thing for a Wilson male to make 60. I don't obssess over it (really), but the Lord is teaching me to number my days.

I recently read this in Psalm 90:

10 The length of our days is seventy years—
or eighty, if we have the strength;
yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

11 Who knows the power of your anger?
For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

12 Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

In closing, I would like to quote (and recommend) a book called Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon, which I have been using in my daily quiet time half my life, since college, and it never gets old. It has readings for every day, one for morning, one for evening, and I recently came across this amazing image from the morning reading for Jan. 7th, on the verse, "For me to live is Christ - Philippians 1:21"

"Lord, accept me. I here present myself, praying to live only in You and to You. Let me be as the bullock that stands between the plow and the altar, to work or to be sacrificed; and let my motto be "Ready for either.""

I've nothing to add. Just meditate on that. I do every day.