Chris Jepson: I am old

I tell my 13-year-old grandson that Gramps is old. I don’t feel particularly old at age 67 but I am nonetheless old. I lunch every Thursday with a truly beautiful man, named Louis, who happens to be 94. He tells me I’m young. We laugh. But, I am not young, I’m chronologically old.

I am especially old when it comes to modern communication. My cell phone is in the console of my vehicle. It is never on. I do use it on occasion, say, when I’m picking someone up at the airport. They are wonderful, nearly indispensible for that task. But short of a road emergency, which I’ve yet to experience, I don’t much use a cell phone.

I refuse to ridicule folks who appear all the time “connected” via their phones. Oh, and I don’t text. Oh, I get the beauty of texting, I do. Pick the kids up when? 6 sharp. K. I suppose if I were currently schlepping my children to lessons — I willingly did piano, dance, saxophone, art, violin, swim practice, acting, etc. — I’d still be hooked-up, but I’m not and wasn’t when I did such kiddy transporting. And we all survived just fine.

Quite candidly, I’m not interested at all in phone conversations (or texting) while driving or alone on the street or in a restaurant. If you wish to discuss so-and-so and what might have happened and mercifully didn’t, save it for a face-to-face.

I am old. I’ve been to parties, big affairs with bands and open bars and dancing and gaiety all around and I’ve observed younger couples, heads-down, just punching away at their phones as life in a conga line merrily passes ’em by. I know. I know. It’s sooooo much better on the other end of the screen.

I know children who are on their electronic devices 10 hours a day playing games that have them murdering monsters (human or otherwise) as they navigate a maze of increasing difficulty. I am unsure the life skills gleaned from such activity but I know from observing America’s children (anecdotally) that their bellies and butts are growing in proportion to their inactivity. Mix in the junk food parents obscenely provide and, well, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how this turns out (medically speaking) for our younger generations.

I know I’m old because my first “paying” job no longer exists. And when you consider the future, that will undoubtedly be the experience for a lot of humanity. I delivered the Des Moines Register newspaper six days a week for five years. Up every morning at 4:45 a.m. to walk 3 plus miles in 2 hours delivering on foot approximately 90 papers. I loved it. I loved the $10 in my pocket every week. I loved the quiet, the solitude and the beauty of my Sioux City route. From age 12 to 17, my life was governed by a clock, by a 4:45 a.m. obligation to get up and get’er done.

I am old because I think it preferable to be active rather than sedentary, to be vigorously “here” rather than passively “there.” I am old because I enjoy being alone. I am old because my chief form of entertainment is reading. Imagine if our children today read instead of “phoning-it-in.” That their minds were expanded by the endless possibilities of words, rather than “entertained” by what? Games. In such a delectable fog, one’s youth is spent. Literally.

I am old. And, no doubt, have it very wrong.