January 30, 2000
I’m Getting Too Old For This
by Joshua Carden
I’ve reached a conclusion over the last two months. I’m old. Or at least, I’m “older.” How do I know this? Two events. Back in the nineties (okay, a few months ago), I went to my youngest brother Jonathan’s 11th birthday party. His activity of choice was Laser Tag. For those of you who have never played, it’s like paint ball…without the laundry bill. For those of you who have never played paint ball…I can’t help you. There were approximately 10 boys in Jonathan’s group and 4 “grown-ups” that were supposed to play with them. The “grown-ups” were me, my brother Jason, and the two older brothers of a boy in Jonathan’s group. Now frankly, I must admit to a little pride here. I assumed that my greater experience (I’d played once before) and my advanced age would allow me to dominate the game, along with the other “grown-ups.” Well, as the old saying goes: “Pride goeth before multiple laser hits.” I think part of the problem was the height disparity. After all, none of the kids came up to my chest. Or my brother Jason’s waist (Okay, okay, he’s not THAT tall).
If I could project the imagery, picture a large, smoke-filled, multi-level warehouse, with four Goliaths, 10 Davids, and loud music. I wore dark clothes for the event, but somehow there must have been a large neon sign that followed me around blinking “shoot here.” And as for MY shooting, well, it felt like trying to shoot grasshoppers on the wing with a BB gun: you get lucky every tenth shot. When the rankings were announced I immediately placed a brown paper bag over my head. Amazingly, my score improved the next round. I told my mom on the way home that I must be getting old. She laughed and said I hadn’t seen anything yet. As usual, she was right.
On Super Bowl weekend, I was in the Washington, D.C. area, spending the weekend with good friends after a fun-filled month of law school. More on that, next column. The father of the family I was visiting announced “Let’s go sledding!” At his ear-splitting whistle, five of his 11 children, and one son-in-law packed into their (what else?) 15-passenger van and we headed off to the local country club. There had been a fair amount of snow that week, but unfortunately a great deal of it had melted away. But the 9th hole had a great hill, and we began to sled. Now, as many of you know, I am from Texas. Sledding is not a top winter activity. As matter of fact, we usually start spring activities shortly after Christmas. I have to get used to this cold weather stuff. Anyway, where was I…oh yes, going down the hill. After a few runs, we older folk got tired of doing the same thing over and over again, so we began to look for something new. The father said, “Hey, do you see that creek?” It was low and to the left on the hill. “I’m going to go to the left of the creek,” and off he went. (The intelligent among you have already figure out where this is going) He steered the sled, but only managed to cross over the creek on a tiny isthmus (look it up, you can count it as geography homework). Next, the son-in-law tried it. He couldn’t steer as far to the left, so he missed the isthmus to the right and fell into the dry side of the creek. My turn. I was determined to make it to the left, so I never steered straight. I held the sled to the left, the entire way down. About 20 feet into my run, I saw the inevitable: Yes, I was going further to the left than any man had gone before. But it wasn’t quite enough. Since I was sitting down, I was relatively helpless at this point. Instead, I bared my teeth, screamed bloody murder, and plunged into icy water up to my chest. Fortunately, nothing was damaged except my pride. As I looked up the hill, I noticed three small children from the neighborhood giving me a standing ovation. I knew then that I would be a legend at the dinner table that night. At least in my own mind.
Praise God, I had packed an extra coat (a trench-coat). As my friend drove me home in my car, I had to shed most of my wet clothing and put on my full-length trench-coat to get warm. Fortunately, I also had a dry pair of shoes in the car. As I finally stopped shivering, my friend dropped me off at the house where I was staying. There I stood, trench-coated, bare-legged, and boots. He looked me up and down and said: “You look like a flasher.” His spiritual gift is sympathy. I had to laugh – and hurry inside before anyone saw me! The dad told me later that he would never tee off for the 9th hole again without laughing. Who could blame him? Hang on, gotta get the phone…..Well, I’ve got to go - there’s a killer game of hide and seek happening at school. I guess you could sum all this up in the words of a country song (please, oh please, don't send me hate mail about country music!): “I’m old enough to know better, but I’m still too young to care!”