Seventy!

 I will hit a milestone birthday next month. Towards the end of May I'll reach the ripe old age of 70. Needless to say, I'm not happy about it. Contrary to what financial advisers and other pundits tell you about postponing retirement and not collecting social security in your 60s, life doesn't begin at 70.

Of course, pundits also say if you have your health, you have everything. But my doctor put the kibosh on that at my last physical about a month ago. He ordered a quart or so of blood-work after which the doctor said the only test that came out fine was for my thyroid. Yea thyroid! I'm not even sure what it does though.

So I take many pills each day. My three-year-old grandson Charlie caught me in the act.

“Grandpa, are you taking pills?” he asked. I told him I was.

“Do they make you feel pretty good?”

I said, yeah, pretty good. At least no side effects that I know of (I didn't go into side effects with him, you know, being three and all).

When I used to spend the night at my son's house, my then four-year-old granddaughter Gwen would retrieve my pill organizer case out of our travel bag and bring it to me when it was time to take my medicine. Never mind that I didn't ask her to do that. In fact, the pill organizer is anything but childproof. If any grandchild took one of my medicines, chances are it wouldn't make him or her feel pretty good.

Most recently my four-year-old grandson Davis spotted me taking pills with my meal. I told him that I was just getting older and sometimes you need to take medicine when you get older. He wondered then how many pills he would have to take when he reached seventy years.

I told him that my mother, his great-grandmother, doesn't take any pills and she's 90.

“That's a big number,” Davis responded.

It is. I can only hope and pray for my pills to carry me to that big number myself.