I don\u2019t know why I said it. Where it came from. What possessed me to utter such a strange and utterly absurd greeting to a co-worker. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow you doing, sport?\u201d I said. <\/p>\n
Sport?!? Who says \u201csport?\u201d I wondered. <\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t the only one. Amused faces popped out of holes everywhere to ponder the same thing. <\/p>\n
\u201cDid you just say \u2018sport?\u2019\u201d they asked. \u201cSeriously?\u201d<\/p>\n
HAHAHAHA!<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019m afraid I did. <\/p>\n
And it wasn\u2019t the only one that day. In class later that morning I was talking to my college students about something and then blurted out for some unexplained reason, \u201cWell, damnation!\u201d <\/p>\n
The class burst into laughter. <\/p>\n
\u201cDamnation?!?\u201d they howled. \u201cIs that like \u2018tarnation?\u2019 \u2018Well, fiddlesticks, pa. You best take junior down to the well and fetch a pale for the vittles. Grab the pig while you\u2019re down there.\u201d<\/p>\n
HAHAHAHA!
\n<\/p>\n
Oh, they had a good time with it. After class I could hear them heading down the hall still hootin\u2019 and hollerin\u2019. <\/p>\n
Wait a minute \u2026 \u201chootin\u2019 and hollerin\u2019?\u201d What is happening to me?!? <\/p>\n
Where are these words coming from? Twice in one day! I\u2019m known to say some pretty dumb stuff. It\u2019s kind of my thing. But this was different. These strange, uncharacteristic, even archaic utterances were something new for me. <\/p>\n
Was this because \u2026 GULP! \u2026 I\u2019m getting older? <\/p>\n
Later this month, I\u2019m turning an age that shall not be named. It\u2019s not that old to some, and I\u2019m not even sure it is to me. I don\u2019t feel \u201cadvanced.\u201d When put together, these two numbers won\u2019t add up to a membership in AARP. I don\u2019t have much in the way of gray hair, and what I do might actually be paint. I\u2019m still in fairly good shape, and people often remark on the very nice \u201celasticity of my cheeks.\u201d (I take this as a compliment about my fitness, although I think it\u2019s a nice way of saying I talk too much.)<\/p>\n
But do you hit an age where your vocabulary goes gray? When it heads for retirement, or starts to adopt what I will describe as an \u201cadvanced wardrobe?\u201d The verbal equivalent of black socks with white sandals. <\/p>\n
Was I experiencing that? It worried me. Don\u2019t get me wrong: My use of the English language has never been what you might call \u201chip to the jive.\u201d In fact, if you use the term \u201chip to the jive,\u201d it\u2019s pretty clear you\u2019re just a walking caricature of a 1950s movie, and lucky if girls talked to you in your late-1980s high school. <\/p>\n
But was aging making it worse? <\/p>\n
I\u2019m finding getting older is getting complicated. I\u2019m into years that need some kind of handbook to explain it all \u2014 how to act, how to talk and how to just be. To make sense of it all and give me some clarity, or direction. <\/p>\n
Or maybe it\u2019s all in my head. Which is exactly where I\u2019m going to try to keep all these \u201csports\u201d and \u201cdamnations\u201d and other uncharacteristic utterances I blurt out \u2026 like \u201cfiddlesticks!\u201d Goodness me, the college students would love that one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don\u2019t know why I said it. Where it came from. What possessed me to utter such a strange and utterly absurd greeting to a co-worker. \u201cHow you doing, sport?\u201d I said. Sport?!? Who says \u201csport?\u201d I wondered. I wasn\u2019t the only one. Amused faces popped out of holes everywhere to ponder the same thing. \u201cDid you just say \u2018sport?\u2019\u201d they asked. \u201cSeriously?\u201d HAHAHAHA! Yes, I\u2019m afraid I did. And it wasn\u2019t the only one that day. In class later that morning I was talking to my college students about something and then blurted out for some unexplained reason, \u201cWell, damnation!\u201d The class burst into laughter. \u201cDamnation?!?\u201d they howled. \u201cIs that like \u2018tarnation?\u2019 \u2018Well, fiddlesticks, pa. You best take junior down to the well and fetch a pale for the vittles. Grab the pig while you\u2019re down there.\u201d HAHAHAHA!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573,557,560],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-nutshells","category-getting-old-er-older","category-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1705,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions\/1705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}