I made the mistake of watching the video that Whip posted the other day, "We Gotta Get Outa This Place"...by the Animals...a song that almost every GI in Vietnam knew by heart...well...at least the chorus.   I remember sitting in the Hua Lu Hotel's rooftop bar; thirty-some hours left in-country and some other drunken short-timer kept playing it on the juke box...so we all sang..."We gotta get outa this place, if it's the last thing we ever do..." and drank more beer and believed that we would get out of there.

It was almost 45 years ago.  I find that so hard to believe.  The song brought back lots of memories but the video started a flood.  Remembering the things I did back then is like watching that video...it's like it happened to someone else.  I don't think I could do that today...I'm not even sure how I did it then!  I ain't a kid anymore.  That fact was driven home by an incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. 

I have an old Chevy 3/4 ton, 4-wheel drive, Silverado.  I also have a steep driveway.  The truck has a weak Park gear, is slips sometime.  Because of that, I always put a big rock in the drivewahy when I need to put the truck near the garage.  I back the truck around the rock and then let it roll forward against the rock.  That always hold it in place, even when I load heavy stuff on it.  The truck has a tire that has a slow leak and needs to be aired up every couple of weeks.  So I put the truck in the driveway so I wouldn't have to stretch the hose from the compressor out to the street.  I backed into the drive then realized I hadn't placed the rock.  I put the truck into Park and sat there to see if it would hold.  It slipped once then held.  I thought I could get to the rock and place it before the truck rolled again.  I jumped out and grabbed the rock.  The truck rolled.  I tried to jam the rock in front of the left front tire but the truck had too much momentum and jumped the rock, scraping and cutting the heck out of my arm.  I stood, took a couple of quick strides and made a leap to get into the cab.  I gotta tell you, I was never a world-class athlete;  but twenty-six years of Army PT, sports, martial arts, swimming, raquetball, and bicycling left me better than average.  Twenty years ago I probably would have made it into the cab.  Thirty years ago I would have made it with room to spare.  Forty years ago I would have leaped over the truck and grabbed the front bumper and stopped it cold...well...you get the idea.  It isnt' forty, thirty, or twenty years ago.  I will be sixty-five  in January and no amount of ignoring it will change it.  I missed the cab, the truck shoved me and somewhere in the mix I managed to tear my left hamstring.  I have had the injury before, same leg, so I knew immediately what had happened, even if I wasn't sure how it happened.

I sat on the driveway watching my pickup roll down the driveway out into the street and into the trailer my neighbor parks across the street.  The pain was rough.  The blood needed attention.  The pride was immeasurably crushed.  But with all that, the worst was yet to come:  I had to go inside and face MamaCharlie with my damages.  I usually do my own doctoring so she doesn't always know what I have done to me...but this one would require some assistance.

I put the truck back at the curb and went inside.  MC was at her sewing machine, as usual.  I told her I might need some help for a minute and she said she'd be there in a minute...but when she saw my arm she really let me have it.  And I guess I deserved it.

The point is that we all age.  I have been kind of ignoring it lately.  In all modesty, I am still fairly youthful, in decent condition, and I have always been stronger than average.  Not being able to do what I would have been able to do easily in the past really bugs me.  Hurts me.  MamaCharlie has Parkinson's Disease and is frustrated that she can't do things she used to...but it is a dibilitating disease.  My only disease is age (I am diabetic,too, but that doesn't do much to my physical abilities)...and it sucks.

So tonight I added insult to injury by playing a CD called Old Dogs.  I bought it years ago and forgot I had it.  It is full of laments over aging written by Shel Silverstein (deceased) and sung by four greats of Country music:  Mel Tillis, Bobby Bare, Waylon Jennings (deceased) and Jerry Reed (deceased).  Sigh.  Every one of the songs hits some aspect of aging that we all have (or will) experience.

In my pea brain I am still that eighteen year old warrior that trundled off to the Green Place to see the elephant.  I still see myself as a young person.  When I pass a mirror I do a double take...who is that old man?  My hair is gray, my skin is thin, my blood is too sweet and my attitude is too sour.  One of the lines from the Old Dogs CD sung by Bobby Bare, talks about how they are building the stairs steeper than they used to...yeah...I know how that feels.

Tonight I feel old.  My leg is still swollen and very painful, the arm has healed up.  But more than all that physical stuff, tonight I feel a lot older than I did a couple weeks ago.