Old friend Bob called yesterday.  "Know what today is?" he says and starts to laugh.  Some friend, bringing up bad memories.  Yesterday was an anniversary.

The driver's license bestowed upon me in 1974 was a gift of freedom.  Not reckless wild freedom, just freedom.  Too chicken to be wild and reckless when I asked for my Dad's car, I went where I told him I was going.  Until one night.

"And where are you going?" he asked me on that night.

"Me and Bob and Fred and two other guys are going to the drive-in, I should be home by 12:30."

He hands me the keys.  Standard issue stuff, we both think.  At least I hope he thinks.  On this summer night, with premeditation, I break the rules.

I tell him we're going to see some harmless comedy.  What we're going to see is one of those drive-in movies that may have cost several hundred dollars to make, but I'd guaranteed the several hundred women in it would today pay several million dollars to have it disappear

We pull into a spot that has two working speakers and within five minutes, a car full of girls pulls in next to us.  I find an extra ten bucks in my wallet, they're playing good rock and roll on the speaker, and instead of cartoons we have the Three Stooges as a preview.  All Curly's, no Shemp's.  (Oh, what a night!)  The sunset is a great burst of orange and red flames, and five seventeen-year-old boys are sure there is a God.

Twenty minutes later, a spaceship takes off in the movie, and we stop talking for a moment.  It is absolutely uncanny how realistic it looks.  This cheap B movie with three hundred blonde women that can't act a lick has stunning special effects. 

"Hey, what's that?"  Bob asks, and with great horror, I realize why it all looks realistic.  Smoke is billowing out of the dashboard of my Dad's car.  Five seventeen-year-old boysare sure there is an angry God. 

We all jump out and I am positive the car is going to blow up, killing thirty-four people.  Horns are honking and the movie stops rolling.  Two guys come to help by pouring beer all over the dash.  The girls that twenty minutes earlier had the makings of future wives are laughing.  I'm looking for that famous hole in the ground to mercifully appear and swallow me.

The car doesn't blow up, the movie starts again, and we all lean against the side of the car waiting for the tow truck to come.  I decide to make an announcement, a public service type thing. 

"First one that tries to be funny here is a dead man."

Everyone, of course, bursts out laughing.

My Dad comes to get us in my Mom's car, a car he hates to drive, and the ride home is properly silent.  My "friends" are sniffing the clean air of freedom and scanning the horizon of a beautiful trouble-free life.

Turns out the last mechanic to work on the car had run out of fuses, and threw a screw in the fuse box instead.  I’m still hunting that guy down.  I've mentally blocked out what happened when I got home to experience Mom and Dad’s wrath, but in a letter I got from my Dad a few years back, I was informed I was no longer grounded.  Bob laughed at that when I told him.

"Very funny," I tell him, "but isn't next week the anniversary of the night you dropped the transmission on your Dad's car, Bob? Bob?  Hello?”

Some friend…doesn’t even want to reminisce with me.

 YouTube?  This is my tube, mello...

If you proudly displayed five or six wispy hairs above your upper lip before your family got its first color TV…you might be Pushing 50.

If you knew, even at age eight, that Brian Keith couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag…you might be Pushing 50.

When you first became aware of the opposite sex and would stare open-mouthed at Joey Heatherton on the Dean Martin show…you somehow made it past 13 and are now Pushing 50.

Did you wonder why Illya Kuryakin was always so brooding and constipated looking; you might be Pushing 50.

If you’d hum/sing the theme to Combat! whenever you walked anywhere…you might be Pushing 50.

When Gladys Kravitz would start in on her poor husband Abner and you secretly wished Samantha would come across the street and just zap her off the show…the next birthday you’re looking at is around your fiftieth.

Harvey Korman…Tim Conway…watching to see who would make the other one laugh and lose his place in the skit.  Still funny to this 50-year old.

Yes, yes, I know the idea was that Hogan stayed at Stalag 13 to help win the war, but c’mon…he had to have thought about escaping, didn’t he?  Before he turned 50?

If Sunday night meant a bath and The Wonderful World of Disney…you might be Pushing 50.

You might be Pushing 50 if your mom hushed you up when Medical Center came on and Dr. Joe Gannon was in a scene.

As a nine-year old, you didn’t understand why it made you uncomfortable.  Now that you’re Pushing 50, you know for sure Adam West was a rather creepy Batman at times.  Sort of Jeff Goldblum-on-downers like.

If watching Jeannie make Major Nelson’s life a living hell taught you not to jack with women, you may have survived to push 50.

If it seems like you watched several thousand episodes of The Monkees…even though only 58 were made…you are Pushing 50.

If you’ve ever called your friend on a walkie-talkie and said, “One Adam-12, One Adam-12…” even as you knew it was the dumbest show ever made, you’re Pushing 50

Pushing 50 means you really, really hated Dr. Smith, nursed a crush on Judy, and owned Lost in Space action figures…don’t you wish you had kept them until now?

Too young for a driver's license, old enough to stay up late   If, no matter what else was on, you found yourself watching Mannix on Saturday nights, you might be Pushing 50.

If you’d sit at your desk with a Big Chief pad and a pencil and write, just like John Boy did, you probably shouldn’t tell anyone you did it, but maybe if, um…well...you just might shouldn’t tell anyone.

Finally, four words any Pushing 50 man has pondered for better than forty years – Ginger or Mary Ann?

Remember how wonderful sleep was when you were a teen?  There were days I’d get up so they’d quit putting that stupid mirror under my nose.  Saw this comedian one time who talked about staying at his parent’s house shortly after he’d moved out.  Right around 5:20 AM there’s a pounding on his bedroom door, and, “HEY, YOU GONNA SLEEP ALL DAY?”  Fact is, when it comes to being young and sleeping, Tommy Boy said it best when he growled at Richard, “No towels; need sleepy.”

When you’re pushing 50 and beyond, you still like sleepy, but there’s an added bonus.  How to describe it?  How about thinking of your favorite Saturday afternoon, 1970’s B movie with the zombie-man and the young, vivacious blonde?  How he walks around?  That’s part of Pushing 50 level sleep; BFM.  Basic Function Mode. I bring all this up to help both illustrate and give you a real life glimpse of all our futures. 

MeeMaw and PeePaw live on 300 acres of beautiful backwoods Tennessee land and, nestled in the side of a hill, they’ve built a lovely retirement home. Over the years Mee and Pee slept in each of the three bedrooms upstairs to get a feel for which one they liked, which bed worked, etc.  It’s a hard knock life, for retirees, right?

One dark, early night/morning, she got up to answer the call of nature.  This was right after the latest room switch, meaning she was blazing a newer path half awake - reference the other-worldly zombie man from above.  Concentrating in the subconscious sense.

PeePaw’s bio-bell rings a minute later, so he gets up.  Ever notice how you shuffle with your head down whilst in BFM?   When two post-Pushing 50 people are in BFM, well…we have her, on the way back to the bedroom; he on the way to the bathroom...and all is fine until she bashes her forehead into his, right in the middle of the dark hallway. Three AM and he’s dripping blood, trying to shake the fog and answer the, “Well, Dad, what in the world were you doing?” question.

As PeePaw said when he told the story, “If I would have known she had a head that hard, I may not have married her sixty years ago.  She had a real good-looking friend.”  As MeeMaw said, “If he hadn’t a-run into me in the hall, he’d probably ran into the wall, stumbled back, hit it again and so on.  He’d still be there, probably.  Old man.” 

Ah, true, long-lasting love, bodily functions, and spicing up the routine.  Life as it goes…pushing 50.

Okay, how can those phone things sticking out of your ear possibly be good for you? How? Maybe if they were called Blessed Chocolate or Fifty-Six MPG I could see sticking one in my ear, but people…it’s called Bluetooth technology, okay?  Blue-tooth! Have you never heard of corporate deniability?

“Well, your honor, me and the other 48 lawyers here just want to say our company did indeed call the technology Bluetooth, if only to gently warn people they should exercise caution while exercising their rights as Americans to jack with their health. By the way, can we smoke in here?  ‘Cause I am having a nicotine fit right now. Good-ness!  Pass me a scoop of that hydrogenated oil there, would ya?”

I will admit that my point of view is generally fashioned by my upbringing and in particular from a two part incident.

One year, my dad got my mom a special Christmas present and when she opened the box you’d have thought he bought her everlasting damnation. 

“Get this thing out of my house!” she yelled.

Next year – in an example of what not to do as a husband – he bought the same present and a handheld radiation thingy.  Mom’s thought was the radiation leaking out of the new-fangled thing would kill us all, or worse, cause extra arms to sprout out of all our foreheads. 

Dad’s logical take was if she had a tool that showed her there was no radiation leaking out, we’d have a new cooking device called, if you haven’t guessed already, a microwave.

It was quite a Christmas morning.  Me and my two brothers, as required by Brother/Son Law, stuck our bellies up to it and turned it in, making horrible faces and sounds.  Not quite the belly that we put in front of it, though, if you remember one of the particular problems the machines were supposed to cause.  Boy did mom get mad. 

When no one was around, as further required by the Law, my brothers grabbed me and held my private parts up to the window and turned the machine on. End of the story is both the microwave and radiation detector went back to the store and dad never made another try to get her one.  Ever.  I suffered no ill effects, as evidenced by the progeny I produced.  Well, two of ‘em are evidence, anyway; not sure about one of them.  (Kidding, kids…Dad’s kidding)

The incident may be affecting my view of that thing sticking out of your ear, but for goodness sake, think about what you’re doing.  If I’m right, then you may be exposing yourself to harmful electronic gremlins.  If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong, but don’t blame me if one day you end up with some weirdoes sidling up to you.  I’m not the only guy with brothers, you know?