A cigar is just a cigar

My first girlfriend recently sent me this song. And I had a thought, considering the lyrics, was she making a wry comment on my refusing to grow up and staying in a rather juvenile but perpetual emotional state for the over fifty years we have known each other or was she simply offering up an odd melange of random musical notes and stanzas for my listening pleasure? 

I'll just sit here drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps and thrashing the air with my hands.

*

I do turn 65 tomorrow, a number that somehow mysteriously forms a real demarcation line for chronological wear and tear in our culture. Happy to have made it this far, had serious doubts and few plans, my body a roadmap of scars, odd humps and divots.

What have I learned? That will take some real thinking and might require the alcohol to wear off. But I do know a few things, a real friend is there for you through thick and thin and they are rarer than one might think. Beauty, like fame, is fleeting and if you are selecting a mate for the former quality, he or she better have something else on the ball as well. I am very lucky in that respect. Life is a short movie and it is what you do when nobody else is looking that counts. Most shrinks are nuttier than fruitcakes. Your friends in New York will largely forget you as soon as you cross the Hudson River. Don't get into partnerships with people that you don't love like family or you will eventually get in trouble and be extremely wary of getting into deals with lawyers, or so my dad always told me anyway. I had one such a deal, it went south and I did end up paying the bills. Don't mix different kinds of alcohol or you will get a bad headache. Don't buy gas station sushi or even burritos for that matter. Beware of holy men and charlatans.  The music sounds different after you come down. Make friends with entropy and benign neglect early and you will have less of a shock when things start to loosen up at the end. Never discuss politics with the cook before you get your meal. Pick your battles. Don't sweat the small stuff. Understand, as Ken Kesey once said, there will always be more stupid people than smart people around. Never miss an opportunity to say I love you, try not to go to bed angry. A frontal view in the mirror is always more charitable than a side view. After you get to a certain age, odd hairs and small lumps of skin will protrude from the strangest places imaginable. And when you get old much of your cardiac workout will be peeing multiple times a night, especially if the bathroom is located on a different floor in your home. Take the money. Understand that the value of the items in storage will never calculate out to what you are paying annually for the damn space.

Think that is about all I got for now. Cheers!