A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a restaurant in Annandale, Va., that I had visited with an old friend 31 years ago.

It's strange when I think of that time, and for some reason, it brings to mind a couple of lines from an old Bob Dylan song:

<em>"Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now."</em>

It's strange. I had just completed one of the two or three worst years of my life. I have no fond memories at all of 1979. It was the year my first marriage imploded, and though I spent nine months trying to make it work again, there was never really any chance.

<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/gazette.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-1126" title="gazette" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/gazette.jpg" alt="Not 29, but close -- Me at 30." width="91" height="130" /></a>The thing I remember most about that year was that I felt so incredibly old. December of 1979 was when I turned 30, and I reached that point feeling as if I had accomplished nothing at all during my 20s.

The next year was better. For one thing, I got the first full-time job -- at the <em>Gazette</em> -- that started my career. For another, maybe equally important, I finally gave up on the marriage in January and started to rebuild my life.

But my 20s were over and I felt damned old.

The irony of it all was that it was so long ago. I'm 61 now and will be eligible to start collecting Social Security in December, but I don't feel all that old anymore.

I have a daughter who is 30 and a son 26. Both of them have already accomplished wonderful things in their lives, and I take so much pride in them. There are few people in the world who I admire more than Pauline and Virgile, and I would do anything in the world that I could to help them be happy.

I don't know how many more years I have to live. I'd be happy with 20 or 30, but if it all ended tomorrow, I certainly wouldn't feel cheated.

I would like to live long enough to shoot my age on a golf course. Since my best score at this point is 78, I'm a long way off. But I figure if I can improve to 73 or 74, maybe that can be a place where age and golf scores meet.

I want to finish my book about my graduating class, and once I do that, maybe finish a novel that could finally be published.

It's nice to have dreams, but it's even nicer to feel young and vital enough to plan to accomplish them.