I’m at the “Rodney Dangerfield” stage of my life.  I don’t get any respect.  It started in November when I turned 66, which I have found is an extremely awkward age.

If you’re 100 years old, newspaper reporters beat paths to your door to ask you dumb questions like “What is your fondest memory?” and “To what do you attribute your longevity?”  If you’re 66, those same reporters avoid you like the plague.

A couple of years ago I interviewed a 100-year-old woman named Dorothea for a story I was writing.  My first clue she might be somebody pretty special came when I stepped up to the back door of her 150-year-old farmhouse and spotted a handwritten note that read, “If my face you do not see/this doorbell chime rings loud for me/press the button firmly down/then give me time to get around.”  Then, suddenly, a hummingbird of a silver-haired woman with a twinkle in her eye was suddenly framed in the doorway like a yesterday portrait.

During the next two hours, Dorothea talked of her 40 years as a schoolteacher and how she was born on Nov. 13, 1903 - 34 days before Orville and Wilbur Wright made their historic first powered flight over the windswept sand dunes near Kitty Hawk, N.C.  Later, when I got around to the all-important question about longevity, she looked me square in the eye and said, “I’ve eaten fresh fruits and vegetables and drank spring water all my life. Hard work probably had something to do with it, too.”
 

Let’s face it, some ages are considered. . .well . . . significant milestone ages. Like 100 and 5 and 21 and 30. But 66 is just a “blah” age.  Greeting card manufacturers don’t help either.  When was the last time you saw a card with the message “Happy 66^th Birthday?”

 
My wife Sally couldn’t find a card for me on my last birthday.  So she bought a 5, a 21 and a 40 and gave me all three.