'Not about to pi-R-square it now...

Last night, while watching TV, I wondered if I could still do the splits. I haven’t done them in years. So I tried and I still could. Amazing, Grace. No, correct, it’s not a great or even marketable skill to have unless you’re a gymnast or possibly a working girl catering to particular fetishes. But the thing is I still could do them at 49. I’m 49. I don’t feel it. I’m not sure what 49 is supposed to feel like but I still feel like I do when I was 13 and doing the splits except now I’m smarter, blonder of hair, no acne and living in Cairns and pretty much doing what I like surrounded by chooks, budgies and errant, visiting bandicoots called Neil.

Age - why do you think people get all emotional and twisted up over a number? My personal opinion is that some people are limited in their thinking. They are people I call A to C types. They run the gamut of emotions and experience between the letters of A to C and they don’t stray any further down the alphabetic chain of life because that’s not who they are. Then there’s there are the types of people who have always been dazzlingly beautiful, smart, rich, desirable, yet not able to do the splits despite their heavenly perfection, who fall apart when the first signs of age kick in and from there they age rapidly because they've never been prepared to be less than the beauty they were. Then there’s us – you and me – the ring-ins, the mismatched, the clumsy and the confusing. We’re the ones that people have always wondered about, looked at and shaken their heads over as we did the splits simply because we could. We don’t age like everyone else because we simply don’t have to. As for numbers like 49? Hell, we sucked at math at school so we’re hardly going to worry about numerical values now because life isn't about pi-R-squaring it is it? It’s about being able to do stuff like the splits at 49.