FINDING LIFE'S SECRETS IN A SPORTS BAR

I slammed down my morning newspaper. Enough of the bad news. Enough of the lousy Cub scores and the grim obit columns. I need to break out of my aging ways. Approaching 80 doesn't mean approaching death. Maybe it's time to test the hot new headline: "80 is the new 60...."

I opted for a simple, hands-on strategy. The local sports bar...!

Surely this scene would immerse me into the vibrant rhythms of the cool carpe diem crowd. Sure enough, there they all were -- young beautiful bodies, tight blouses and even tighter pants, throbbing music, clinking glasses, popping TV screens, bubbles of exuberant conversations all around me. Wow, these boomers and generation X-ers are really having fun. Look what I've been missing all this time.

I sat down, ordered some exotic drink being promoted by some exotic young waitress and being mixed by some exotic young stud behind the bar. Really cool! I even started to cheer the team that was scoring all the runs, although I'm not quite sure who was playing what, where and why. But in sports bars that's what you do -- cheer the winners, high-five your buddies, bump into the girls.

Like, this 80-is-the-new-60 pop psychology is pretty intoxicating, man!

The thing is -- even before I woke up the next morning with a jack-hammer headache and a pair of cottony eyeballs -- I began to sense something disconcerting in the place. I mean, was all that noise and clinking and high-fiving actually as much fun as it looked...? It looked that way; and yet as I studied the happy young warriors closer, I had the strangest sensation that the frivolity may not exactly have qualified as fun...the beautiful bodies may not have really felt as invincible as they pretended....and the look in their eyes may have been just as anxious to find approval and security in their companions as I do approaching 80.

Now wait a minute, this doesn't compute. You mean all those loud, back-slapping folks having all this fun body-to- body in that crowded corner of paradise were really just searching for some of the same soul-to-soul reassurance I do that someone cares whether I live or die?

Gulping the morning-after aspirin, why you wonder has it taken 80 years to realize the obvious. To get comfortable with the realization that regardless of stage or age or venue, we are after all, all so very much more alike than we thought. A thought so enormously comforting, you would like to share it with all those hard-working young warriors from last night.

But you really can't, can you? Maybe they'll find it long before you did...