grateful for youth

Mine, specifically.

Volunteering at a retirement home has made two things abundantly clear to me:

1. Old people can flatulate more than should be physically possible.

2. I am not an old person yet.

I'm not sure why it has always plagued me, but since I was a child, I've always felt the need to spend my youth responsibly. Maybe I watched too many movies or read to many books in which the elderly lament to children the loss of their youth and implore them to not let theirs go to waste, or maybe I just made it up, but somehow I've been deeply imbued with this concept.

I might be looking at a freezing cold ocean and think, Man if I jump in that, it's really going to suck, but someday I won't be able to jump into it at all, and so I might as well do it now while I still have the chance or This outfit might be showing a little more skin than is necessary, but fuck it, might as well show it while I still got it...etc.

So I make a conscious effort to be young while I'm still young. Maybe youth is a state of mind, maybe you're only as old as you feel, or maybe you're only as old as your liver, or any of those cliches. But I'm still able-bodied, I still have my choice of sexual partners, I can still run for miles, and dance all night, and drink a milkshake and do a cartwheel. These are wonderful things and I am so grateful for them. And I plan to keep doing them until I can't do them anymore. So watch as I go out in a short skirt with a tall glass in a crowd of fun people and ask if I feel an ounce of guilt. The answer is no, no I don't.