Who Is the Old Man in the Mirror?

I looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t like what I saw. This old man was staring back at me.

I did the shifting pose back and forth, tilting and raising my head from side-to-side, trying to find “my good side,” but it didn’t help.

It reminded me of an e-mail I got from a friend last week. It was titled: “The Meaning of Life.”  It read: “Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the heck happened.”

That’s me.

Now, I realize that I was never in contention to win any beauty contests, but that’s besides the point.

To me, it seems like just a few years ago when I, a somewhat cute little freckled-faced kid, was playing with childhood friends in the streets and fields of Pleasanton, a small town in northern California. 

And it seems like yesterday when my beautiful daughter Ashley was just a toddler, bounding around the living room, falling into furniture. Ashley today is 26 years old.

I even remember in my mid-30s when I got my first newspaper publisher’s job and thought the whole world was ahead of me.

So who is this old guy staring back at me in the mirror?

Last week I went to visit one of my many doctors. You know, it’s funny, the older you get, the more doctors you seem to get to know.

My personal list includes a nephrologist (kidney), a neurologist, my regular physician and now a dermatologist.

When you’re young, you go to a dermatologist to get rid of acne. The self-help method I learned was to take an alcohol pad, wipe your face and then spend time out in the sun to get your face dried out.

On the flip side, when you get old, you return to the dermatologist to get the pre-cancer problems cut out of the face you tried so hard to fix four decades ago with the sun.

Last week I had a chunk cut out of my forehead, one out of my cheek, one out of my neck and one from my forearm. Unfortunately, this wasn’t my first visit.

The stitches afterward didn’t bother me, but the Coumadin I take for blood thinning caused a fully closed black left eye. That bothered me.

When I was out and about this weekend I ran into several young people I know. They took one look at my face gave me a puzzled look that said, “What the heck happened to you?”

I told them I had just participated in my first MMA (mixed martial arts) fight.

They chuckled back and the meaning came through loud and clear, “Isn’t he a cute old man.”

My daughter and her boyfriend came over a couple of weeks ago to settle an argument. The boyfriend said I had gray hair, my daughter argued brown. Although I wasn’t involved, I probably would have thrown beige into the mix for my dramatically receding hairline. (Unfortunately, the boyfriend won the argument -- by a hair or two.)

Still, I find myself holding the doors open for older people, or giving up my seat to someone; last week I offered to carry something to an elderly stranger’s car that appeared too heavy

But who am I trying to kid?

It is me, the old man in the mirror, with a reminder; we all better enjoy the ride while it lasts.

Tom Johnson is co-publisher of the Daily Voice. You can e-mail him here