Rusty Saber: Birthday brings memories flooding back, peek at future

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.

This is being written on my birthday May 6. It is an immensely high numbered one; exactly how high is something I'll keep to myself.

Having a birthday in early May is nice. It comes at the most beautiful time of year. In my lifetime I have had few cold and dreary birthdays. Having spent a lot of years as a college teacher, commencement usually fell close to, if not on, my birthday, which allowed me to jokingly thank fellow faculty members for the birthday party.

Some folks don't like to acknowledge birthdays because they hate to admit they are getting older. I confess that it would be nice to turn the calendar back rather than forward, but being able to count birthdays stands head-and-shoulders above the alternative to no longer have them to count.

On birthdays I reflect on things from the past, some that I may not have thought about in a long time. In the midst of this nostalgic journey, an unnerving notion occurs to me. My memories are all pre-2000, meaning they are from the 20th century, a time younger folks now think of in the distant past, as they would the l9th century.

They do not yet realize that 100 years from now the 21st century will be considered ancient history by youngsters.

For reasons that elude me, a long-ago memory conjured up today is about square dancing. The whole thing revolves around a high-school event. Neither before nor afterwards have I thought much about square dancing; however, for an entire school year, it was the most "in" of "in" things to do. Thinking about it now, I recall just how "in" it was.

The school planned for a giant end-of-school-year square-dance party. Throughout the year, square-dance lessons were given in the high-school gym. Those clever enough to wheedle their way out of classes were able to spend many fantastic hours in the gym dancing with girls, all under the guise of secondary education.

Back then, I was a potentate among wheedlers; thus, I danced with a lot of girls and became temporarily an adequate square dancer. I probably haven't since danced the Virginia Reel; at the time, it was "the" dance. Today's television-, computer games- and Internet-engrossed youth are likely to assume "square" would describe the nature of the activity. At first, I assumed it was going to be "square," but it turned out to be a gem of a memory.

Youthful thoughts of dancing with girls segue into yet another birthday reminiscence: the music of another era. The romantic ballads sung by Nat "King" Cole, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney and many more bring tender memories of glorious teen-age years. Ah, those days of dancing (round dancing, not square) to amorous ballads with the love of my life (at the moment, at least) was as good as it got in those days.

I wonder if today's youth will one day feel pangs of nostalgia when they hear the gentle refrains of Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem or whomever? Probably not.

I suppose that as we grow older, we may give some thought to the end of life, not that I'm expecting to reach that point anytime soon. But I have given thought to something that won't matter until, you know, the end. That is what is to be written on my gravestone?

In a Rusty Saber several years ago, I wrote about selecting my epitaph. Perhaps the most famous one being that of W.C. Fields: "All in all, I would rather be in Philadelphia." As I recall, my column considered several epitaphs of the same ilk as Fields'. The choice then was: "He did not suffer fools gladly."

I still don't suffer fools gladly, or otherwise, but the intervening years have softened my outlook a tad bit toward fools. This birthday remembrance has brought about a kinder and gentler, albeit wordy, epitaph preference. To be etched on my tombstone: "He liked a lot of people, others he tolerated, the rest he ignored." Kinder and gentler, indeed.

On my next birthday, I may even rethink my judgment that accordion music is an oxymoron. Then, maybe I won't.