Unusual for me ...

Something occurred yesterday at the office which resulted  in my learning the age of my co-worker, Barry. Barry and I are relative buds; he was the guy I interviewed with, went to St. Joe with last August for my first week on the job, and he and I arrive at 6:00 each morning, and can cover a lot of ground without a lot of vagrant ears around. Barry is a very fit fellow, strong and slim, but is quite bald, wears reading glasses low on his nose, and has a very glass-half-empty kind of outlook to go along with his ever-present frown.

Maybe it was because I was the new guy, maybe it was because the second guy I interviewed with is definitely six or seven years older than I am, but I always imagined Barry and I to be pretty close to the same age, without really focusing on it too much. Well, I found out Barry's six years younger than I am, and while that puts him firmly in his mid-50s, the realization arrested me a little bit. I don't usually think about my age, except to consider it "just a number," but for a while yesterday I had the strange, not-very-pleasant novelty of feeling like the old guy.


You hear a lot about older guys - the physical infirmities, the limits on stamina, etc., but I can definitely say that there are new compensations with each passing year. There are things that I understand that wouldn't have been so obvious even ten years ago - just different aspects of life and fortune and philosophy and perception. And on this job, I feel like "the monarch of the sea," to quote Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark - the boss, the guy with the answers. So ... it was a strange moment of vulnerability, a bit of a kryptonite sensation. It passed quickly enough.