America's Seniors at www.TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com

If I'm not a senior,then what am I?

by Daniel Hines (written four years ago...since then, I have turned 65, remarried and am living the time of my life)

If I sound confused, bear with me. Having just turned 60, I have had to come to the realization that it beats the alternative to die at 59. At least on some days. But, that's another story.

The point is that I am growing older. So what? I started growing older from the moment I was born and I started that journey towards our inevitable end.

Still, for some time after turning 50, I tried to avoid the appearance of age. I even went so far as to color my hair. Despite what the advertisements for hair color tell you, there really is nothing attractive about a head of artificially colored hair that belongs to a much younger man stuck on top of a face that is showing its mileage and years. I always suspected that the TV commercials do it backwards and hire young men whose hair they then dye gray or silver, then show them with their natural dark hair and tell us that is the result of the dye product. Besides, these guys are models. They look good with gray hair, dark hair, or no hair.

If dying my hair wasn't enough, I even shaved the hairs on my chest once because they were turning gray. When you try to dye chest hairs, it turns your skin a different color. That was right after a much younger lady friend told me that what bothered her most about me was that she thought of how old I would be when she was the age I was. The fact that I was in much better physical condition
than she was and she has since become grossly overweight did not matter.

In other words, I was old, but I did not want to be classified as a senior.

So why, if I have done better since then, am I writing about it now? Because a friend reminded of my own denial recently when he told me of a conversation he had with a psychologist, of all things, who had appeared on our radio show TodaysSeniors on the Radio. It seems that while the guest thought the show was great, he believed that older people resented being called 'seniors.'

Actually, the truth was, as you might guess, that the psychologist himself was in the early stages of seniorhood. If I were his counselor, I might suggest to him that he is also in the early stages of denial about his increasing age.

I can't be too judgmental. I have admitted to my past aversion to senior hood. Even when we first came up with the idea of Today's Seniors Network, I opted for a name for the site called 'Beautiful World'. Still, I had come a long way from my own early days of being a senior. I have even let the hair grow back on my chest. It's snow white, and I don't care. I have quit coloring my hair and it has become a reddish brown mop of full hair sprinkled with some gray.

But I can't pat myself on the back too much. By insisting upon 'Beautiful World', I was still not ready to admit that I was a senior or whatever term someone wants to apply to those of us 50 and over. It was only when I became comfortable with myself, my age and my life that I decided it was time to understand just where I am. I am a senior, and besides, we found that there was a Beautiful World porno site already on the web.

The truth is that there is no single age group that defines seniors. There is the group in the early 50s. Then you come to those in the 60s. And, more and more 'seniors' are active into their 70s, 80s and yes, even 90 and above.

And when did senior become a bad word? When I was 17, I was proud to be a senior in high school. It meant I had paid my dues, sat through my quota of boring classes, mastered certain skills and reached a level where society said, 'Hey, good going, you're a senior.'

The same is true now. I have paid my dues. I have had successes and failures. I have reached a time in my life that is not the end of new adventures, but a new beginning. I have more wisdom and maturity. And, the same is true of my fellow seniors. I feel good.

So stand back all you youngsters. The senior class is proud of not only what it has done, but also the contributions it has to make to a society that can benefit from our experiences. In closing, a word of encouragement to my psychologist friend, don't worry about becoming a senior. As Zig Ziglar says, if you can get up and go, it proves you haven't gotten up and gone. It's better to be here than to be gone!