The other day at the grocery store, a lime green Challenger,
much like the one pictured below (but with a huge hood scoop) parked in a
handicapped parking place next to me. You would normally expect to see a car
like this being driven by a young guy in his 20’s, but when the driver got out
of the car, I was a little surprised that he was a guy in his early 70’s. The
car DID have a handicapped license plate, as well as an American flag on the
plate itself, which told me that it belongs to a disabled veteran.
Likely for most of human history, we have tried to
hold onto our youth as long as we could. The Fountain of Youth is
a spring that
supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters.
Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of
years, appearing in writings by Herodotus (5th century BC), the Alexander
romance (3rd century AD), and the stories of Prester
John (early Crusades, 11th/12th centuries AD). Stories of
similar waters were also evidently prominent among the indigenous peoples of
the Caribbean during
the Age of Exploration (early
16th century), who spoke of the restorative powers of the water in the mythical
land of Bimini and
others. Based on these many legends, explorers and adventurers have long looked
for the elusive Fountain of Youth or, at least, some remedy to aging, which was
most often associated with magic waters. These waters were not necessarily a
fountain but might have been a river, a spring, or any other water source that
was said to reverse the aging process and cure sickness when drank or bathed
in.
The legend became particularly prominent in the 16th
century, when it was attached to the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León,
first Governor of Puerto Rico.
According to an apocryphal combination of New World and Eurasian elements,
Ponce de León was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to what
is now Florida in
1513. The legend says that Ponce de León was told by Native Americans that
the Fountain of Youth was in Bimini and
it could restore youth to anyone.
If you visit St. Augustine, Florida today, you will have
an opportunity to visit the Fountain of Youth Archeological Park, which
contains the remains of the first Spanish settlement in the year 1513.
An old guy today doesn’t have to travel to Florida to
regain a sense of being a young man again, due to the magic of modern day
chemistry.
In 1998, Pfizer developed a new blood pressure treatment with
the chemical name of sildenafil. Although it WAS a successful treatment for
high blood pressure, it also had an interesting side effect, since it temporarily
cured erectile dysfunction. The FDA approved the drug (now known as Viagara)
and sales skyrocketed. By 2008, sales were close to $2 billion a year. Despite
competition from other products (Cialis and Levitra) it was still bringing in
$1.6 billion a year in 2016.
Regaining your youth can be taken to extremes, though, and the
best example of that is Hugh Hefner, who married 26 year old Crystal Harris in
2012, when he was 86 years old.
Women also want to stay young and attractive as long as they
can. Jane Fonda turned 82 on December 21, and she is still a very attractive
woman.
Nancy Pelosi turned 79 in March, and she is still not afraid
to “speak truth to power”. 2020 is DEFINITELY going to be an interesting year
for a lady who is now serving in her 17th term as a congresswomen.
At some point in the last decade, I came to the realization
that I could no longer list “brown” as my hair color on my driver’s license, so
today it reads “white”. I’m at the age where a number of people that I know are
having cataract surgery, or getting hip and/or knee replacements, so we
certainly can’t be called “those young kids” anymore.
None of us know how long we’ll be walking the planet, but we ARE
living much longer than most of our ancestors. Life expectancy in the United States in 1935, the year the
Social Security Act was put into law, was 60 for men and 64 for women. In 2017,
the life expectancy of males is
77 and 82 for females. Both of my parents live to be in their mid-80’s,
and I have two relatives who lived to be 95.
Today is the first day of a brand new year, and it’s been a number
of years since I made any New Year’s resolutions. Having said that, though, I
DO plan think of myself as a young man for as long as I can, and that (to me)
is the best way to approach life.
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