My 65th Birthday Friday - That Means No More "Marker Birthdays" left...
From turning 15 and getting a drivers permit, and on through all the markers, 65 kinda is the last one - I get Medicare. Now what?
Friday, 27 February, 2026, 0608 hundred (or however they say that) I’m 65. How did that happen? Except yeah, I’m glad it did. Or will. The alternative ain’t great is it. I’ll tell people Friday and beyond - I’ll tell em when they ask how old I am that I’m 65, but look 64 and don’t feel a day over 63. I adjust that joke every year.
In truth, and anyone around this age with any fire at all in em will tell you that they still feel like teenager, or somebody in their 20’s. In their heads anyway. So probably I should say something like - I’m 65, probably look it, but I’m 14 inside, and yes, that’s equal parts awesome and ridiculous.
Used to be - the thing was - and for a lot of years when someone asked me my age I’d tell em and they’d say - Oh - you don’t look it. I always looked young, when I was younger. I’d get carded in my 30’s. When I turned 40 same stuff. 50… well… things started shifting a little. Hair on my ears. Less and less on my head. Gastric issues daily. You know.
Nobody says anything when I tell em my age now. A polite nod. A - only 65??? they’ll say under their breath.
And I think I look ok. I take good care of myself. Mostly…
I’m like Papillon, Steve McQueen’s Papillon, when he sticks his head out of his cell and asks the new young guy next to him - how do I look? I feel pretty good - but how do I look? And the young guy looks at this ragged old man next to him, this guy who just a couple years earlier was the young guy looking at another old man, and says - you look good… But Papi knew anyway I think and so do I.
And it strikes me that 65 is the last one of these things. Marker birthdays. You know - at 12 or something I got confirmed in the Catholic Church, 15 permit, 16 license, 18, 19, 21, 25… and others all meant something - I would get to do - or achieve an age where I was allowed to do something - or more. Like 18 when I voted for the first time. My 21st birthday was in Las Vegas. I told my dad when I sat at my first blackjack table that I knew more about the game when I was 12 than most of the players I was sitting with at the table. I can still confidently make that claim when I go today. I suggested a competency test and not a flat age for blackjack players. That would be me - even then.
So here’s a happy birthday piece to me, and all of you, who may not think about these marker birthdays and the ending of them, largely because this sort of thing is what you think about when you’re me banging around the desert.
