"Quite Clear, No Doubt, Somehow"

If you are old enough to recognize the song I've quoted in the title, then you are far too old to remember that song or anything else.  Which, of course, is the point of my choosing that title.

It's from "My Back Pages" by Bob Dylan, the last song on his 1964 album "Another Side of Bob Dylan."  And Cory and I now resemble Bob Dylan to an amazing degree--in that all three of us are older than dirt and our brains are horribly garbled.  And two of the three of us now have faces that routinely frighten small children.















However, the main connection we have to "My Back Pages" is the line that follows the line that forms the title of this post:  "Ahh, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."   Because Cory and I keep getting younger. 

My evidence for this claim is the results of the Sam Costa Half Marathon, held March 23, 2013 in Carmel, Indiana.  (I give you this information because I can clearly see that you are remarkably astute, and hence know better than to accept anything I say as having a basis in reality.)   In that race, Cory took second place in his age group--official name:  The Can-Remember-The-Primordial-Ooze Age Group; though, called for the sake of convenience, the Over-65 age group.  I myself took third place in the Rode-On-Dinosaurs-As-A-Child age group (also known informally as the Over-60 age group).  I think it is safe to say from this evidence that youthfulness is absolutely bursting out of our pores!

Now, I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that we haven't really gotten youthful.  (You are especially likely to be thinking that if you did check the facts--which show that our actual race times were somewhere between "tardy" and "still out on the course.")  You are thinking that we just have gotten old at a slightly slower rate than the average codger.  Well, what can I say but that I'm ashamed of you!  You're going to introduce The Truth to this conversation?!  What in the world does that have to do with the lives of me and Cory?

Ignoring your shameful attempt to bring reason into this blog, I will continue on.  This weekend, Cory and I will take our teenaged spryness to the grand city of Boston, and on Monday we'll be running the Boston Marathon.  (Having been founded in 1630, that city can properly appreciate that CB and I are just a couple of crazy kids, and not the old coots everyone else thinks we are.  Furthermore, having been founded by Puritans, the citizens of Boston can fully appreciate how remarkable it is that we are able to run at all, considering the [self-imposed] obstacles we've had to surmount not to be living under a bridge, drinking Sterno.) 

To be clear, the difference between the expected outcome for me and Cory and the actual outcome is the "living under a bridge" part.  Of course we drink Sterno.  We're not SNOBS!

So Monday will be an interesting experiment in how far our youth will take us.  I'm just grateful that I'm not as old as I was when Cory and I first ran the Boston Marathon in 1994.  As Bob Dylan has said, "The slow one now will later be fast."  (Translation:  "Boys and girls, don't do drugs!  They really mess up your reasoning.")