Feeling Old

[ABNARTY]

Oddly enough, I caught a glimpse of my age yesterday when I climbed my ladders to lop off some branches
of a tree hanging over from a neighbour's property. I understand that it is fairly-regularly-used trope about boys
climbing trees, but up there among the Rowan berry-heavy branches, I recalled the days when the need to use
ladders would of been out of the question for two reasons.

First, for a youngster of any age, access to a set of three-tiered aluminium ladders was something beyond fair reason.
The cost for such a seldom-used equipment was way-out of the spending range of the people I knew and I honestly
cannot recall ever seeing that kind of apparatus unless by a steeplejack.

Secondly -and more important, trees were for climbing and for a boy to need ladders in order to scale a tree would
be the equivalent of wearing a safety-helmet for riding a bicycle. Danger was the candy that enticed and brought
great riches through experience and social-standing among one's peers. A trait that now is frowned upon due to
the constant mollycoddling by an overbearing nanny-state paradigm.

I can appreciate that bones are slow to mend as time ravages the body and one's responsibilities are greater as
one matures, but there's something about the air up there among the leaves, a tingle of defying death that for a
for an old man recalling his youth and the notion of immortality, well it's a feeling I haven't felt in a long time and
a friend I've missed.

We have the same friend. 

If I had a ladder as a youngster, I would have used it to simply climb higher. When I got to the top of the ladder, I would jump on a limb, drag the ladder up, and keep going. 

I was not too bright. Then the Army gave me the opportunity to jump out of airplanes from really far up and repel off of cliffs and helicopters. Of course my inner moron was ecstatic. Every time I did it, I could hear him giggling with joy inside of me. Meanwhile, I wondered where all my marbles went. 

But, we're still here. Me and the moron.