Yes, I’m aware that’s not how the Latin phrase actually goes, but fidget suits my mood better that fuget.

I’m having some difficulty in accepting that in just over a week, I will have reached the mythical, once legendary, age of 65 years.

I remember, as a child, trying to figure out how old I would be in 2001 (thank you, Dr. Clarke, for that marker.) I had to constantly recount them, as I couldn’t conceive of actually being that age. (For the curious, but not curious enough to do the math, 47.) Forty-seven was OLD. That was older than my parents – just younger than one of my grandmothers (neither of whom lived to 2001, by the by.)

65 was the age when people back then retired, whatever that meant. It doesn’t have that meaning today, because the Social Security retirement age keeps going up – what is it now, 72? I don’t know. I had to stop working due to health reasons back in 1997, so some of those age markers have been meaningless to me for a couple of decades.

My Eldest child is now 36; that’s how old I was the year they turned seven. My youngest was 31 this year. My Middle Child has a ten year old.

Where does the time fly?

I used to have a theory of time, that life seems to speed up once we are out of school, because before then, it’s marked by clear indicators such as “Christmas Break” (now winter break), “Easter Break” (now spring vacation) and the ever popular (at least for some kids) “SUMMER VACATION!”

Once you get out of school, you’re pretty much stuck with dealing with work, jobs, more work, and dealing with Life Itself until you finally make it to retirement, but we no longer have those clear markers of time, that we used to mark our life calendars by. Sure, we might get a three-day weekend or something, and maybe a paid vacation, if you had a job with benefits that included paid time off, but today? Those are getting rarer and rarer. People are having to work two, three or more jobs, just to get enough income to cover those most basic necessities of food and shelter, that pesky Minimum Basic Standards of Adequate Care, as we used to call it when I worked for “The Welfare Department” back in California aeons ago.

And never seem to catch a break from it all.

Maybe it’s time to take a trip — the Neverlands seem appealing, but we’ve been watching “Once Upon A Time” on Netflix, and at the moment, the 2003 version of Peter Pan is on the DVD player. 😀