In high school, our family vehicle was a grey station wagon. It was affectionately known as the Silver Bullet. It had three rows of seats and the rear bench seat faced backward. There was nothing power in the car, unless you consider human power. It had 4×60 air conditioning – four windows wound open and car going 60 mph. Even the rear window had to be cranked open and closed by hand. I remember on a trip dad pulled the car over to the side of the road. A highway patrol officer pulled in behind us and dad explained it looked like rain ahead so he was closing the rear window.

Being a dumb high school kid, I decided it would be fun to spin the tires of the Silver Bullet in our dirt driveway. It was fun until the car fish-tailed and the back quarter panel hit a light pole. I wasn’t on dad’s good list for an extended period of time. I decided I’d try to fix the damage. After bending metal and sanding and painting with cans of auto spray paint, it looked more like a grey Appaloosa. I did not improve my standing with dad.

The car was multi-functional. It hauled everything from people to wood to garbage to furniture to automobile spray paint. It was a classic.

We recently moved into a townhome. It was a logical next step for us as we have aged and I’ve had some health issues. We wanted to be able to live on one level and have someone else mow the yard and move the snow. The transition was hard – we accumulated too much stuff – and moving simply isn’t any fun. But we’re here and we can even occasionally find things we are looking for!

Reflecting on aging, I feel a bit like the Silver Bullet. I’ve held a number of occupations over my life; I guess that makes me multi-functional. As we have aged, we have lived life so we know more, it makes us almost classic. My body is less automatic and powerful; a lot of things feel backward and need to be cranked. About a year ago, I hit a pole, and a lot of people have pulled in behind me to check on my status. We get wrinklier and saggier, and there isn’t enough spray paint to cover up aging. But we either get older – or we don’t, the options are quite limited. Aging consumes a lot of our human power.

But the worst part of getting older – I’ve never had a cool nickname.