Seventy - and not a bit wise.....

When German-Austrian actor Curd Juergens, a towering green-eyed beau, turned sixty he decided to write (or have some 'ghost' write) his autobiography. The title: "Sixty Years - and not a bit wise". This must have been at least some thirty five years ago.

I was still quite young then, and thought: 'Well, if Curd Juergens isn't wise at that age, he would surely mature further, and be blessed by wisdom at seventy'. Being a sanguine hedonist who ate, drank, smoked, and fornicated excessively, he didn't make it, and died at age 67 - thus, I'll never know what he would have been like at my age.

What I know is this: I wasn't wise at sixty, and I have to confess that now, at seventy, I am still as far away from being a wise man as I was in my youth...

It took me almost all my adult life to realize that in order to be sagacious when you are old you had to be already sagacious as a youngster.

Most people mistake experience for wisdom. Big mistake! Grey hair means nothing. In fact - many, if not most, grey wolves and she-wolves are fools because they always were - and, hey, I am NOT excluding myself from the pack!!

What I became during the voyage on that Ship of Fools that has been my life is a grouchy old fart, aggressive, intolerant, impatient, not too pleasant to be with, and whatnot - all rather flattering attributes I have heard from family members and close friends, people who know me well, and, incomprehensibly, still kinda like me.... :-)

As a small kid I was gentle and charming, so I was told - look at that little boy, and see what became of him:

1943
(2 1/2 years old)

Oh, the ravages...........

2011
(seventy years old)

...... of time.

Happy birthday to me - and, particularly, to my beautiful, faithful, and indulgent wife Karin, also born on a 21st of March.

Karin