12 28 11 Happy New Year!12 28 11 Happy New Year!

So, here we are again, smack dab in the middle, stuck between Christmas, and New Years. How fast the time flies by. How quick the years seem to roll through. How old do we feel now? How much would you like to hit me right now? Smile.

As the years go by, along with them goes our youth. My youth. Youth, in particular. I have an old saying when  someone asks me how I am doing. I say, “I am getting older by the hour, and uglier by the minute. Sad, but true. The inevitable is due.

My mom told me a month or so ago, while we were chatting on Skype, that I looked like Sean Connery. I then proceeded to ask her if she had just had her medications altered by her physician. She told me that she hadn’t, and that I indeed did look like Sean Connery. I couldn’t imagine why, seeing as I was using an HD web cam and all.

I used to kid with my wife back in the nineties that I thought I looked like Tom Selleck, complete with the perm job. By the way, those perm jobs that my wife used to give me, they hurt like hell, but I didn’t mind. A reflection of Tom was waiting for me around the corner, in the next mirror. I was just that damn fine. Lol

Give me a break. I might have thought I looked like Tom Selleck one minute, and Fred Flintstone the next.

I still can’t believe it is almost 2012. I remember back in 1980 when I was running the shuttle truck from Waterville, to the retread shop in Biddeford twice a week. I would have to sign all the invoices of the product I was picking up. There were like a hundred invoices each trip, or so it seemed. I can remember signing my name and the date on every invoice. The first time I wrote 1980, it just seemed so weird, no seventy something and all. Hard to believe that was thirty one years ago, or I should say, thirty two. Time sure does fly by.

Remember the millennium? Remember how weird it felt to be turning the odometer over? I still say that the millennium didn’t start until 2001, but 2000 sounded so much better for the hype that went along with it, and what the hell did I know anyways.

Now, its twelve years later, and it doesn’t seem possible. It just doesn’t seem real some times.

When I was a kid, I never thought I would grow up. It just seemed light years away. Unapproachable in my life time. I can remember riding the grade school bus in Little Falls, especially one winter. The winter of ‘66-‘67. There was a snow drift on the roof of Penny Burrows house that I noticed every morning. I kept telling myself that I would always remember this snow drift, in this year, on this bus, for the rest of my life, and so far, I have. At that point and time in my life, 2012 didn’t even enter the picture. It just didn’t exist, and if it didn’t exist, then how would I ever get there?

Every morning, through the winter, I noticed the drift on their roof. It got bigger, then smaller, then big again, then small once more, until into mid April, it finally disappeared. I never noticed the snow drift on their roof again, and I lived and rode that bus for the next several years. For some reason, that particular winter stuck in my mind. It represented my childhood, and it still seems as if it was yesterday or maybe the day before.

As Bob Segar sang once upon a time, I am a Rambling Man. I ramble sometimes, especially when it comes to snow drifts on the Burrows house in 1967.

Forty five years have gone by. Forty five winters. Forty five summers. Forty five Christmases, a couple of birthdays, and New Years. I can hardly believe it. I can’t imagine if I make it for another forty five years. That would be the year, umm, the year 2057. Say it with me, Twenty Fifty Seven. Man that sounds weird, and old. I wonder what it would be like then? I wonder if I would still look like Sean Selleck, or tom Connery? If I do, I hope I can still type.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope 2012 treats you all well.