Is 52 considered "very old"?

The answer is YES.

I just turned 52 years old on Christmas Day... Which means I share a birthday with Jimmy Buffet, Jesus Christ, and the Ku Klux Klan.  

It also means I am very old.

I used to tell people I was on "the back nine of life" implying I was at least halfway home to either seeing my maker or eternal nothingness.  However, with the average US male life expectancy being 77, that "back nine" reference is more appropriate for people who are only turning 38 or 39 years old. To continue with golf references, I am more fittingly "teeing off on thirteen", and let me tell you, conditioning is becoming an issue, and I regret having all those hot dogs at the turn.

I am aware that I can't stop the hands of time, but I started taking care of myself in the last quarter of this year after I cracked yet another toilet seat. Since October, I am probably down 35-40 pounds... A deck chair off the Titanic, I know, but it's a start. I decided not to document my weight-loss journey because this site (along with every social media platform) gives people too many journeys to watch while preventing them from actually embarking on any. 

Plus my end-game is not some sort of impressive goal... My eventual AFTER picture would inevitably be another's BEFORE pic, but I simply want to travel from "morbidly obese" to "barely obese" and maybe get down to a size where I fit underneath a standard umbrella.

But enough of being slightly less-fat... Let's get back to being considerably more-old.

I came to the sobering conclusion of just how ancient I am when I made the mistake of Googling some actors' and actresses' ages while I was taking a dump on Christmas morning, and the results did not make me happy.

- The results of the search, not the results of the dump... My aforementioned health kick has made my bowel movements smooth and bulky... Praise Jesus. -

Here are the bullets...

- Morgan Freeman was my age when he filmed both Lean On Me AND Driving Miss Daisy. This is not to say that "Freckles" looked terrible in either of those flicks, but those characters feel ancient compared to the character I am currently playing in real life.

- Wilford Brimley, "The King of Diabeetus," was at least a year younger than me when he filmed Cocoon.

I don't believe that movie has legs with the younger generation, so here is Wilford Brimley on the far left in Cocoon…

Mondadori Portfolio. Getty Images.

- Blanche Devereaux was approximately 53 years old at the start of The Golden Girls, but the actress who played her, Rue McClanahan, was a few years younger, only 51 years old, at the start of the series. 

Therefore… Even though Blanche was clearly the most fuckable of the bunch… I am older than a Golden Girl.

And the list goes on and on.

So I guess what I am trying to say is… NEWS FLASH!… I am now as old as fuck. So the next time you hear me stupidly say that I am "firmly on the back nine", please pivot sports analogies and remind me I am more realistically "well past the seventh-inning stretch."

Birthdays suck.

Take a report.

-Large