The Funniest Thing

Recently, I was having a conversation with an elderly woman. At some point she said "I will be 80 years old next month, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard."

Aging is a strange thing after all, and, perhaps for that reason, funny. There are ways in which our spirits never age and so the body begins to slow us down, to change, to present some challenges to us, but inside some of us may not feel that way. My poetry teacher tells us, aspirant poets, that we don't really grow old but that our age means we have been younger longer.

I like that. I like to think that there is a youthfulness we forever keep and that as years accumulate, our age , because it's so different from how we may feel inside, is a funny thing to hear.

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