The greatest birthday conspiracy of all

I turned 48 the other day. Dang old - you got that right!

Jethro Tull put it so well - "Too old to Rock 'n' Roll, Too young to die".

Middle age blues, maybe, but I am not depressed.  The good Lord puts us all here for a purpose...I just want to make sure that I do everything I can to fulfill that purpose.

You get to a certain age and the end starts to come in sight.  The question "Have I done all that I'm supposed to do" starts to gnaw at you.

Jodie and Eric took this big box of writings from my college days.  My dear mother-in-law took my writings and, with the help of Eric, sister-in-law Denise, and nephew Vance, made a huge two volume set of scrapbooks of my writings.

In the mid '80s I was a feature writer for The Daily Barometer, the student newspaper for Oregon State University.  I was also a copy editor.  My favorite job was that of columnist.

I only got $7 a column.  It came out weekly and it was called "Witticisms".  The money kept me supplied with Pepsi and cookies, but the real payoff was that I had a voice.  I learned that in order to make people laugh, you need to make them  feel.  Make them laugh, make them cry, make them mad.  We all have preconceived notions about everything.  The easiest way around that is through a person's heart.

As I thumb through the scrapbooks, I am amazed.  I wrote a lot of stuff!

"Kerr legend appears to be a little more of a myth."  The namesake of OSU's library was not a crook, but as a president of the early Oregon Agricultural College, he bent rules as far as he could without breaking them.  Anyway, this was my first story that made the front page of  The Barometer.  That  was a big deal in the day.

My columns. Wow!  I wrote a lot of sappy stuff!  I wrote a lot about how being weird, going against the norm, is okay. I wrote many columns about My Buddy (myself) with a disability dealing with every day challenges.  I will need to figure out how to share some of these columns with you.

There are also many issues of "In Pursuit", a newsletter I edited for the Campus Ambassadors group I was involved in.  We had writers, and a great cartoonist who was in high school.  We worked hard and produced a pretty slick newsletter with the goal of getting people thinking about God.

The greatest thing about these scrapbooks is that it has my juices flowing again.  I was a prolific writer in my college days - some of it good, some of it bad, but some of it great.

The great birthday conspiracy has me believing I can get back there.

Jethro Tull was wrong.  I am not too old for rock 'n roll...and I am way to young to die!