So I had to start my own birthday thread, because nobody could wait until the actual day, and that's okay, but somebody oughta get the date right, and I suppose it should be me. So I deleted one birthday thread and locked the other one, and this will have to do for an official one.
Whew.
![Bored :bored:](./images/smilies/boredsmiley.gif)
The thing about it is, it's just so preposterous to think that I would reach the age of 70.
After all the crazy stuff I did as a yoot, it just seems weird to me that I would still be alive at 70 years old.
I certainly never thought I'd reach 70. I had very reasonable expectations of being dead before I was 40.
Y'all know, I left home the day after I graduated high school in June 1971, and drove my VW bus clean across this great land of ours, to the Haight-Ashbury to be a hippy forever, and I led a crazy street life for many years, and I honestly thought, if I can just make it to 40, that will be a good long life for me.
I made it to 40.
![Dance :dance:](./images/smilies/eusa_dance.gif)
I came THISCLOSE to dying on more than half a dozen occasions, but I did make it to age 40, and I even managed to get a good education and some nice jobs along the road, considering where I'd been.
And at 41 I married ol' Wifehorn, instead of being dead. This is all bonus time now. She still had to clean me up some, mind you. I was almost could pretend to be civilized semi-civilized by then.
![Black Eye :blackeye:](./images/smilies/blackeye.gif)
But she's kept me alive and kicking all this time.
![Old Man :oldman:](./images/smilies/old_man_SMILEY.gif)