"And the beat goes on ..."

Remember the old Sonny and Cher song — “And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on ...’
Several things have happened lately that brought that song to mind.
• I was texting with a friend a couple weeks ago. This friend is much younger than me and we were talking about self perceptions.
I mentioned that it is easy to forget your chronological age when you feel particularly good or not so good.
When I was in high school I was always mistaken for being in my mid 20s.
Six years ago I was working as a temp person for a Terre Haute factory.
The lady I was working with told me I looked like I was in my 50s. I was past 60 at the time.
“Well, don’t tell anyone that,” she said.
• Recently I was visiting with another friend.
He asked about my wife and I told him she was really tired that day because we had spent a weekend with our daughter and Linda always thinks she has to do everything to help Amanda — just like her mom helped her when our kids were young.
“See what you have to look forward to?” I said to my friend who is decades younger than me.
• This past week I was visiting with Joe Holechko, a new friend who recently retired from being a barber at age 90.
We had attended his combination retirement and birthday party on the same Saturday after he hung up his apron that noon.
On this occasion we were at the YMCA.
“Do you come here to work out?” he asked me.
I told him about my recent absence from the Y due to eye surgery.
“But I’m back,” I said.
He was very complimentary about the piece I wrote on his retirement for the paper and told me what he had been up to lately.
“Just remember, God has a lot more for you to do,” I said.
“And for you, too,” he replied.
• This week, I had lunch with “Dangerous Dan” Jensen.
Dan was the morning man and I was the news director on WIMC-FM in Crawfordsville for a number of years, back in the ‘90s.
We used to get together for lunch about once a month but hadn’t seen each other in probably a year.
So, when we sat down to eat, we started comparing notes on our recent heart attacks.
“Wow,” I thought. “We really sound like a couple of old geezers!”
“And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on.”
On Friday I happened to notice several of my Facebook friends had recent birthdays. Many of them listed their ages. Nearly all of them are younger than me.
“Man, you people are young!” I wrote.
I hope I never feel my age. It’s too much fun feeling good and younger than my years.