Racing Father Time

Becoming a adult legally starts on your 18th birthday from then on out it is each to its own road. I kinda crashed into adult hood like a drunk crashing through the front door after a night on the town. No pun intended. But really it all started out having fun with the guys, we got jobs because we didn't want to go to college, we bought new trucks, because the bank would loan us the money and all the while hunting, fishing, two tracking and thinking we where big timing it. Then a couple of those good o'l boys get married, have a few kids and then one or two say "I don't" and you realized how wierd those bon fires are going to be.

In less than a week I will turn 34 and things have started to catch me by surprise lately. I have noticed that the teenage boys I run into on the farms and jobsites treat me like I know something. Kinda with respect and they don't even know me. Granted I have a skill set and a career, but really I can still jump higher, dive deeper and come up dryer. Well until the other night. I showed up at Ken Topp's place with shavings and two highschool age boys where putting up hay. They where in my way so I jumped on that hay wagon to help get them out of my way and to show those boys up. Heaving that hay way the hell up on the hay stack. As I was dumping the load they where asking me questions about the truck and then whispering to eachother. The crumy part is when I got in the truck to leave, I felt the worse than I had all week. Later that night at a chiropractor appt (pinched nerve in my back) I bitched about still having the strength to do it and not holding up. Doc gave me some stretching excersises to do and told me to behave myself for a little until the pinched nerve heals. To add insult to injury when I complained to Kris later that night she said with a laugh ( Yea, you are getting older and you need to do the excersises)

Then bam!!!! Dan's oldest is old enough to babysit and I tease him about the training braws that are going to be showing up in the laundry. You get together with old friends and the topic turns to what kind of health your parents are in and what pain killers work best for you or what kinds of excersises you do in the morning to stretch the back out. You turn around and you all are making money and have careers. Then about 9:00 you start thinking that you better get going because you need to get up in the morning. Then John says "my kids need to get home." and one by one we all head home. Or you are coming through town on a sat morning and give Mom a call and tell her you are stopping by. She has a cup of coffee for you when you get there and you blow the whole morning, just catching up.

For some reason all of this has hit me lately. I see a lifted pickup with loud exhast and two doods with nascar caps and patchy gotees and think it wasn't that long ago it was us. I drive through Hamilton on a weekend night and don't see the pickups lined up at the mobile. But in  half a second I see it and it is 1998 again and we are racing father time. I guess we still are racing father time and fifteen years from now we will creaping up on 50 and thinking about those good o'l days in our 30's.