ORALE SANTA FE: The other day while I was wearing down the batteries on the remote control, I came across a series of television programs on public television that featured some aging rock stars performing live before an equally aging but highly adoring audience.
I couldn't help but notice that some of the apparent baby boomers in the crowd were a-rockin' and a-groovin' just as intensely as they undoubtedly did when the graying, balding, paunchy, crackly voiced rockers performed the same songs in their prime decades ago. Right then I realized that we've now officially entered into a new era: The children of the rebellious '60s are now in their cantankerous 60s. (OK, I can hear the bellyaching out there— some of you aren't quite there yet, or was that just the Di-gel talkin'?)
Luckily, at the time of that Channel 5 fundraiser, there wasn't a mirror anywhere within sight of my own couch-potato perch because then I would've noticed that I obviously wasn't that much behind in years than many of the people on the stage or those swaying in the audience. It's always easier to point at somebody else and say, “Man, he sure has aged,” while the other person is no doubt thinking the same thing about you, perhaps even more.
But now that it's my turn to start thinking about how gracefully my own rock-star idols are aging, I wonder how many things I'm clinging onto myself, you know, to make myself feel like a spring chicken again. For some of us that might mean hanging around people younger than ourselves, perhaps our children's age or maybe slightly older.
But I know I'd stick out like a sore thumb out there on the grade-school playground, so that definitely wouldn't work for me, especially on the teeter-totter. As we age, however, we actually do tend to teeter and totter, especially after getting up off the couch for some more Di-gel during a commercial.
I don't think hanging out with older high schoolers would be my fountain of youth, either. Heck, a couple of weeks ago at my nephew's football game, most of the Capital Jaguars team and some of the parents and coaches shaved their heads and donned mohawks before their district game as a show of solidarity and common school spirit. Man, I sure wanted to join them, but at my age I'd be lucky to get even half a mohawk going, and you definitely wouldn't be able to see it from the front.
Santa Fe, back in the day
Sometimes I wonder if I'd feel sprightly and ornery again if once a week I took a long ride in a '58 Chevrolet out to the boondocks, never really knowing the time. I'd remember when you could park on and cruise the whole perimeter of the Plaza, or when the whole of Canyon Road was a two-way street and there were actually people who lived there who drove cars in worse shape than mine.
Or maybe I'd feel young again remembering when Richards Avenue was just a dirt path off another dirt road— Rodeo Road— leading past the power lines to the middle of nowhere, where we'd go park and wish that there were more things happening in this one-mall town.
These are perpetual teenaged rants spawned in bouts of boredom, and irrational logic, you know, like go out to the most remote spot you can find and then complain that there's nothing to do. But I'll pass on those antics to feel young again. At this point in life I'd rather take a nap than be bored; at least in my dreams I can still be fleet of foot.
Of course, our own young will never really be able to visualize when Santa Fe was more like the Old Santa Fe we read about in all the classic literature, that same stuff that still is keeping them coming on the airplanes, on the trains, in the automobiles, and yes, on the bus. Everybody's got to get off of something.
Helping us feel young
Even our own city government has taken measures to make some of us feel young again. For quite a few years now they've made it possible for seniors to partake in the Senior Olympics, in which persons more than 50 years old can compete in a variety of sports.
As I inch closer toward being able to join the senior ranks, I must graduate from the Over-35 Basketball League at the Chavez Center. That was the city's act of compassion for all of us has-beens who still had to struggle against the whippersnappers and 20-somethings fresh out of high school and college.
Most of us know some of those fellas, they're ones that can run forever, twist an ankle on Tuesday and go out and play on Wednesday like nothing happened. Oh yeah, and they're also the chamacos who argue amongst themselves before the season about who gets to wear the number 69.
These guys— and we were all once like that, too— think that their youth and athletic prowess will last forever. But one of the interesting things about aging is that you get to see the whippersnappers first get whipped, then have kids, grow pot bellies and finally have their youth fleet by them until before they know it, they're also ready for the over-35 competition.
Well, now that I'm teetering and tottering closer to the senior category in athletics, I'm ready for the city, in another desperate act of compassion, to form another league that will accommodate my current needs— the “Over-45, Under 6-foot, Over-200-Pound League.” When I suggested that to some of our city-recreation officials, they said there was already a league like that— it's called softball.
Luckily for guys as old as me or even older, maturity and age do not necessarily mean the same thing. Having the mind of a 13-year-old in an aging baby boomer's body is great for the achey-breaky baby boomer, but not so nice for his wife who has her own youth issues to deal with besides having an overgrown teenager in denial to deal with.
But really, after the body heads south for the winter, isn't youth actually just a mind-set or perhaps even a long-term memory? Some of us have might have had an old dog that still thought he was a puppy but somehow he just couldn't get off his cushion.
For now, however, I guess I'll be content to go watch an aging Rod Stewart sing “Forever Young” at the Journal Pavilion in Albuquerque right after he croons to Maggie that he really should be back in school. And by this time I hope he's honest to all them young chicks in the audience about being the professor emeritus and not the freshman.
