It’s night-time and the headlights coming at me on the small, two-lane road seem to have a halo around them. I’m mesmerized by the blinding beams of yellow light but, fortunately, reflexively shy away from them. Somehow, I’m able to figure out where the road bends to the left, only because I’ve driven this road through my neighborhood a thousand times.

But I don’t like driving it at night anymore. In fact, I don’t like driving at night pretty much anywhere nowadays….

(Image by Samuele Errico Piccarini, Unsplash)

…When I ambled around the perimeter, she followed just out of reach. I had brought along treats for encouragement. She inched up to me, stretching out her neck and lips to grab an apple biscuit, and then darted away. We eyed each other at opposite ends of the arena. Cuing off each other’s shoulders, we followed the other’s lead in an exquisite dance…

Occasionally, when we get to a certain age—that is, our age—we start to have difficulty remembering stuff. Like where we put the house keys, if we left the water running in the bathtub or the Pythagorean theorem. Yes, this happens to all of us from time to time. In fact, studies show that about a third of members of our generation have trouble knowing where I put my glasses.

I was once young and busy and often, you know, bored.

It’s not that I lacked stuff to do. I am a New Yorker. But frequently—while standing on a grocery line, in the days when someone had to punch in the price of each item by hand; or waiting on Broadway and 86th to meet a tardy friend at a time when there was no way of contacting anyone anywhere beside their office or home; or on a plane having finally finished “Jane Eyre” with three hours still to go until JFK and no other book in my briefcase—I was deathly bored…..

Currently, however, I am old and much less busy but never bored…

Wintry months have me meandering indoors at the University Mall in South Burlington, VT. Morning crew starts at 8:30 a.m. when only the IHop restaurant is open. We are quiet and determined with our walkers, canes and shuffling gaits. Regulars acknowledge each other. We are on task in our forward momentum.

After a lap or two, some sit and join their coffee klatch. Others soldier on. Even with my Ferrari stickers, me and my walker are about the slowest. I am passed again and again as I do three rounds. A few determined shop owners get their steps in before start of business….

(first published in VTDigger)

…On our second-to-last day the boat that carries tourists around the Seine was fully booked. It’s been a staple of our many visits here, and it suddenly struck me I might never have the chance to ride it again. Age has a funny way of doing that, of creeping up the back of my neck when I least expect it….

(Photo by Devon Lanson-Alleyne)

… When I was a kid, I used to laugh at my parents always reading the obituaries in the daily newspapers, back when we had daily newspapers, and frequently noting how young someone who had just died was. How that person was younger than they were. I thought I would never do such an old-person thing.

I now do such a thing. …

(photo: Michelle Henderson, Unsplash)

(This piece was originally submitted as a response to our query: “Does age bring wisdom.”)

…The muscle memory that comes from a half-century of newspapering means I can write journalism about as easily as Derek Jeter used to field hot grounders….

….Hippie kids like me were galvanized by our opposition to the Vietnam War. We experimented with drugs and directly faced-off against our parents’ materialistic, straight and conservative lifestyles. Many of us adopted vegetarian diets, joined communes where we cohabitated with others of like minds, dropped out of school, joined militant organizations and were fearless in using our collective power to change society….

Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met? How did you meet? How did it go?

Answer in the comments on the Waddaya Think page or email your answer to us at: writingaboutourgeneration.com

Excerpts:

Melinda Moulton: Michelle Obama….She hugged us tight and looked down into our faces (she is so tall) and told us that we mattered and that we should keep our faith in America.

Chris Harper: We did a profile of Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown. Barbara Walters wasn't in a particularly good mood…because she'd just come from a meeting with OJ's defense team and couldn't convince them to let her interview him….Gordy and I did a duo of "Money, That's What I Want!"

David Mindich:….The bartender…pulled me aside and said, “I want you to bring this drink to Andy Warhol….When I came back the bartender, said, “You idiot! That guy isn’t Warhol!”

Jerry Lanson: I was working with the kitchen crew at The Putney School when Robert Kennedy (the real one, not his son) came walking through, shaking hands.

Mark Kurlansky: "Possibly the most famous was Walter Cronkite. He invited me to his Upper East side apartment and he answered the door himself. In that voice I had heard all my life…”

Marty Appel: The most famous person I ever met will make you smile, Maury Allen.

Neil Offen: …She called him “boy” as often as she could. “Cassius, boy, gotta take a picture with you. C’mon, boy, let’s go take a picture.” “OK,” he said now. “Cheese.” …And just as he said it, Ali turned and bent down to the woman and gave her a big, wet, messy kiss right on the lips.

Mitchell Stephens: …Bill Clinton…We pushed a piece of paper out toward him and he, hurriedly, signed. That extraordinary piece of paper became the subject of perhaps our longest running family dispute: Who the heck lost it?

A Video by Eiko Otake, John R.Killacky,

and Brian Stevenson

(Photo credit: Jeanmarie Cross)

When the wheels of the plane lifted off from the tarmac at LaGuardia that January day I sobbed as if my heart were broken. 

I could no longer afford rent in NYC and  was returning. Permanently.  To my Midwestern roots. 

That was 3 years ago.

"My life, " I thought, "is over." 

Turns out, it was.

An appreciation of the haunting power of “nothings” — in math, in love, in life, in the universe, as well as in the middle of donuts.

….I remember rushing back to the office on a Sunday because on a note I’d placed in a colleague’s box I had misspelled Rupert Murdoch’s name: “Murdock.” And I once managed to misspell, in an article, not one but both names of the then Standards Editor of The New York Times….

How did a generation that began with such idealism turn so reactionary? How did our revolutionary ethos turn into pseudo-fascism? Weren’t we the generation that marched in the streets, for civil rights and against the war? Weren’t we the generation that burned our draft cards and called for—no, demanded—change? Weren’t we the hippie generation that partied at Woodstock and didn’t trust anyone over thirty?

This is going to agitate a few of you, but I don’t care. I am just sick and tired of not hearing human voices. People don’t talk to each other anymore—they TEXT. We relate with emojis, letters for words and incomplete sentences and phrases that lack emotion. Conversation has been reduced to a “notification beep.”

My grandchildren did not hesitate to tell me which grandma they preferred. (Yes, I asked, even though I know you're not supposed to.)

"The other grandma," Jonah, then 7, answered, right away.

"Yeah," his sister, Sasha, at the time 4, promptly chimed in. "Grandma, in Michigan."

The reason? (Yes, I asked.)

" You buy us nothing," Jonah answered, again without hesitation. "Not one thing."

(The story first appeared in The Record.

_{What’s the best live show you’ve ever seen?}

Answer in the comments on the Waddaya Think page or email us at writingaboutourgeneration.com

Excerpts:

Marty Appel: …The Beatles, Shea Stadium, 1966.  Yes I was there.  It was 35 minutes long…

Lew Borman: …I had seen them on Ed Sullivan and I heard they were going to play in Indianapolis as part of their tour….

Brooks Dareff: …Best surprise (tie): Grateful Dead, unannounced, at the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta, Ore.; Eric Clapton, unannounced, filling in for the recently departed Duane Allman, Nassau Colisuem….

SDWilliams; …Lol! When I saw the title about "Best Live Show" I thought it was about television shows, since we grew up in the era of live TV. So . . . "The Howdy Doody Show," because my brother got to be in the actual Peanut gallery once. Really! Forget seeing the Stones, the Byrds, Springsteen...he met Howdy Doody!

Jeanette McVicker: …Keith Emerson literally spinning in mid-air….

Silvia Gambardella: …The Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore East in the ‘70s, the original Chicago also ‘70s….

Frank Van Riper: Murray, a slight little kid, would always play at our assemblies at PS 90 in the Bronx….

Melinda Moulton: ….A Rod Stewart concert in the Boston Garden. We were tripping on acid…..

Arthur Engoron: …From the first notes, which were the opening to Born on the Bayou….

Mitchell Stephens: …dozens of folding chairs were being hurled at the stage, at Morrison….

Neil Offen: …Bruce Springsteen was playing the Bottom Line….

Does age bring wisdom? Do you have an example.

Write your thoughts in the comments below or email us at WritingAboutYourGeneration.com.

Marty Appel: Age does not bring wisdom unless you have kept up with everything those 30 and under know. The wisdom is confined to your own bracket of age 30 to present.

Arthur Engoron: Yes. I think more deeply. I consider more alternatives. I simplify what can be. I have more self-control. I ask myself, "What's the worst that can happen." If it's bad, I don't do it.

Mitch Stephens: Well, I’m less likely to sweat the little things — like whether I said something dumb at the restaurant last night. And that’s not just because I forget many of the little things, including what I said last night. But reconciling myself with the big things – infirmity and death, in particular – may require some more aging.

Neil Offen: If age really brought wisdom I wouldn’t have ignored the crushing pain in my chest that screamed heart attack….

…Once again I bought only one ticket. It had been my practice, for various early Dylan manifestations, to bring my wife or a kid or a friend. But eventually I realized that the pleasure of their company was outweighed by the annoyance of their complaints – about his unwillingness to play familiar songs in familiar arrangements, about the unprettiness of his voice….