I'm afraid I may have crossed over the line from pleasantly aging to crazy old coot today, and I have a feeling it might have happened all at once.

We had been visiting Garner State Park in Uvalde County -- one of my very favorite Texas destinations so far -- for a hike, and we were gathering our stuff together to return to the ranch. I found my little notebook, my voice recorder, my iPod, my camera, my water bottle and my jacket, but for the life of me, I couldn't find my glasses.

[caption id="attachment_477" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Brautiful Garner State Park"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/srl1.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-477" title="srl1" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/srl1-300x166.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="166" /></a>[/caption]

I had taken them off earlier, and I was pretty sure I had put them on the dashboard. I looked there and couldn't find them, so I checked to see if they had slipped to the floor. They hadn't, so I searched my jacket pockets to no avail.

I walked over to the picnic table and looked around, and I walked the area gingerly in case they had fallen onto the ground.

"I guess they're gone," I said.

Not great, but no big deal. The glasses I had lost were my <em>old</em> driving glasses, which I have continued to wear since getting the new ones because the photo-gray "sunglass" feature is much better on the old ones.

<!--more-->I figured losing the glasses might have been God's way of telling me it was time to start wearing the newer ones, which I had brought with me to Texas and left in my trailer back at the ranch. Since I was a passenger in the van and not the driver, I could easily function without my glasses for an hour.

So we started back to the ranch. I wasn't thrilled I had lost my glasses, but I certainly wasn't going to let it bother me.

Halfway back, I realized something. To put it bluntly, I realized that I was a total moron.

I was wearing my glasses. I had been wearing my glasses the entire time I had been looking for them.

Not on the top of my head. Not perched on my forehead.

I had been wearing them in the exact way glasses are meant to be worn, and the entire time I was looking for them, my vision was better because I had them on. The folks I was with were surprised because they thought the pair I had been searching vainly for was a second pair, not the pair I was obviously wearing.

Oops.

[caption id="attachment_478" align="alignright" width="101" caption="Gabby Hayes"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/phpUux9311.jpeg"><img class="size-full wp-image-478" title="phpUux931" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/phpUux9311.jpeg" alt="" width="101" height="125" /></a>[/caption]

I had officially become a crazy old coot, the sort of guy who yammers on and on and makes no sense at all.

It reminded me of Bob Greene's wonderful book, <a title="The 50-Year Dash" href="http://www.amazon.com/50-Year-Dash-Bob-Greene/dp/0385493010" target="_self">"The 50-Year Dash," </a>in which he wrote of the difference between how we view ourselves and how our younger co-workers view us once we turn 50.

Greene said that while the average 50-year-old may look in the mirror and see Harrison Ford or Tom Selleck looking back at him, his 25-year-old co-worker is looking at him and seeing <a title="Gabby Hayes" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_%22Gabby%22_Hayes" target="_self">Gabby Hayes</a>.

It has been a while since I was 50, but as I have been losing weight and getting into shape the last six weeks, I have started to enjoy my reflection in the mirror a little more.

Not anymore.

After what happened today, I'll look at myself in the mirror and expect the guy looking back at me to start spouting off:

<em>"Consarn it, Hoppy."</em>