I turned 70 today, a young age for an older person to be, but it is the oldest I have ever been by a long shot. It has been well over six decades since I learned in arithmetic how to carry the one, and the rest has sped by like microfiche…
— from ‘It’s not so terribly strange to be 70’ by Anne Lamott, in The Washington Post, April 10, 2024.
A few days ago, I came across a delightful meditation on a sometimes-not-so-delightful event. Columnist Anne Lamott wrote about the experience of turning 70, which included — for her — a sense of relief, from finally knowing how little she knows.
I’m jealous.
My 70th birthday is a few years off. Actually, ten years off. I can’t say it was a relief to reach 60, because my birthday is not until September, so I technically, haven’t yet reached that age. But if I make it to September, I will be able to say whether turning 60 is a relief or not.
In the title of her column, Ms. Lamott — being 70 years old — can refer to an iconic record album by the popular singing duo, Simon and Garfunkel, released in 1968… and assume that the rest of us will instantly bring to mind the Paul Simon rhyme, “How terribly strange to be seventy…”
Some of us were only four years old when ‘Bookends’ was released, and for me, as a four-year-old, it was a bit intellectual. I was more into ‘Simon Says’ by The 1910 Fruitgum Company. I couldn’t imagine being 7 years old, let alone 70.
But from my current vantage point, 70 does still seem pretty strange. Maybe not ‘terribly strange’, but at least ‘slightly peculiar.’
I was impressed by Ms. Lamott’s claim that she now perceives how little she knows, except that most of her column is a long list of things she actually does know. (Presumably, she will realize when she hits 80, that she didn’t know them after all. Or maybe, she will have forgotten them.)
Being myself almost 60, I still don’t have the slightest idea how little I know. It’s as bit hard to believe that, just ten years from now, everything will be revealed as unjustified presumption.
Paul Simon was only 24 years old when he wrote in the song, ‘Old Friends’:
Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be 70.
He probably didn’t know how little he knew. As Ms. Lamott has explained, it’s not terribly strange at all.
When I was 24, I got married to my first wife. If we want to talk about terribly strange things, that was terribly strange. You think you know someone, and then you marry them, and they turn out to be a completely different person.
And they feel the same way about you.
Ms. Lamott apparently got married to the man of her dreams, late in life.
“Then after a long search, I met this brilliant, kind writer guy and, three days after I started getting Social Security, I married him…”
So maybe we all have something to look forward to, once we start getting Social Security. If we can wait that long. My hat is off to Ms. Lamott, for making sure she had Social Security first, before getting married.
My favorite line in Ms. Lamott’s essay:
I know the cycle is life, death, new life, and I think this is a bad system, but it is the one currently in place.
She left out “taxes”, however. The actual cycle is “life, taxes, death, inheritance taxes, new life.”
Nevertheless, I agree with her. It’s a bad system, but the one currently in place.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.