There are certain phrases, they may even be truisms, that I should repeat to myself every morning as some sort of mantra.

“Don’t take yourself too seriously… no one else does !”

I see a lot of commercials because I watch a lot of sports on t.v. No streaming for me. Yeah, I’m a dinosaur.

One ad in particular caught my eye. It was for Skip the Dishes. A fine-looking young woman appears in a succession of outfits, all the while singing and enjoying a variety of takeout delights.

“That young lady’s got a future,” I remarked to my son Adam. “Attractive, good stage-presence as they used to say, and a great voice. I know talent when I see it. She could go places.”

Adam looked over at me with wonder, or was it shock, in his eyes.

“Dad,” he exclaimed, ” that’s Katie Perry.!”

O.K. I’ve heard of her. So I’m not quite up-to-date on the Top 40 or whatever they call it these days. Last concert I went to was the Rolling Stones playing at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa, oh, about twenty years ago. Seems like yesterday. I didn’t even have to pay for a ticket. I stood on the wooden stairs of a ticket-trailer office just outside of the stadium, where I got a side view of Mick Jagger and could see the show almost perfectly.

Best money I never spent.

Kids, listen up. Well, probably there’s no one under the age of fifty reading this blog, but there’s no use keeping the scant bit of wisdom that I’ve acquired in the past several decades to myself. Life goes by in a blur. Even though you might be now looking at your grandfather and quietly shaking your head in baffled wonderment, let me assure you that are looking at a mirror image of what you yourself will be in no time at all.

For instance, my father used to say, “David likes to think with the liberals and eat with the conservatives.” In reply, I’d snort in derision but I guess what he was saying was that I was a virtue-signaler decades before that term had ever been used. Now those types drive me up the wall. But another old guy wrote centuries ago that all the world’s a stage and that one man in his time will play many parts. (We can change that ‘man’ to ‘person; even I couldn’t avoid a little enlightenment during my past few decades.)

But let’s get back to the point… and I do have a point. I just have to remember it. (You know… not to take yourself too seriously?) Back up quite a few years now to when my father was in his early eighties: I sent him a birthday card picturing a bunch of geriatrics climbing onto their motorcycles with one of the octogenarians saying, “It’s fifteen minutes to the next restroom. Let’s ride.” I thought it was hilarious but when I next talked to my father over the phone I got the impression he didn’t find it as uproariously funny as I did. Now I’m a senior myself and while recently discussing the plight of so many oldsters in old-age homes with a friend, I quoted Roger Daltrey with a line from the Who’s classic song ‘My Generation.” “Hope I die before I grow old.” My friend smiled sardonically at me, much in the same way my father used to.

“What do think you are now, Dave?”

I can only console myself by asking if any of you have seen a recent photo of Roger Daltrey ?