Defy Your Age!

I know most of us can remember a parent or teacher screaming at us and saying ACT YOUR AGE! It was easy to be 16 going on 10 or 11 in our foolish choices. Yet, the said fact today is that too often adults live as if their lives are over. What happened to being adventurous and a risk taker? Is it possible to learn from some of our kids around us that aren’t afraid of doing something new and different today?

I can remember the great life I had as a twelve-year-old living on an Air Force Base in Montana. There were a group of us that were in Boy Scouts that had this passion for digging. Yes, we loved to dig tunnels in the dirt mountain behind us that had appeared out of nowhere. We lived on a new Air Force base where new housing projects going up all of the time. We had collected a lot of 2x4’s and sheets of plywood from all the building to reinforce our systems of tunnels in the man-made mountain.  All of us took this vow of silence not to tell our parents about what we were doing realizing they would be horrified. Our new home away from home became more and more a reality each day.

The down side to having your best friend be the Base Commander’s son is that eventually the Colonel figured out what we were doing. I will never forget the look on his face then on my parent’s face when they visited our well planned out system of tunnels on this pile of dirt that we called our mountain. My mom and dad in one sense were mystified at how well we had put together this second home. The Base Commander didn’t mince words and the following day the big bulldozers had destroyed our building masterpiece.  Sadly this was before digital cameras and cell phones could have made this work of art go viral on YouTube!

I’m very fortunate to have my father in-law as one of my best examples of someone who can defy their age as he approaches 90. I will never forget his birthday present for number #85 was to jump out of an airplane at 10K feet above the Otay Mesa border in the San Diego area. All of his kids had pitched in to cover the cost of his childhood fantasy of parachuting. The real reason, which he was quick to admit, was that one of his fellow residents at Mt. Miguel had already made 3 jumps by her 85^th birthday. Paul, who does have a rather competitive edge, couldn’t be out done by a grandma!

Yes, I do admit that there is a fine line between being a juvenile type of an adult that does totally crazy stupid things that are an embarrassment to everyone. I want to live my life so that my age never stops me from pursuing my passion of seeing at risk youth and adults get their 22^nd chance at life after facing hardship, prejudice and poor parenting.  I had a close friend ask me if I was going to collect social security when I age this coming year. My response, which she already knew, was NO! I want to defy my age so that as I enter into my 70’s and 80’s that I can brag about how many marathons I’ve done and how many kids I’ve watched graduate from high school and college! Life should never stop!

So please live your life and forget your AGE! It’s ok to be childlike but not childish!