My life is flashing before me

This pending birthday thing is getting to me. One week from 40. How did this happen to me?

Little things keep reminding me of the past in ways they don’t usually. I have to get my driver’s license renewed this month, and the memories of getting that first license have been very vivid. I took the driving part of my test during a driver’s ed period on my 16th birthday in 1982. (And yes, I passed on the first try.) That night I drove Kim how from my birthday party in my mom’s green four-door 1978 Ford LTD.

Songs on the radio remind me of specific events. Styx and REO Speedwagon are coming to town in a couple of weeks; Styx was the first concert I saw. On a radio call-in show the other day someone mentioned Steve Winwood and that triggered a memory. Tonight I bought “When You See a Chance Take It” from iTunes … that was the first song played at the first dance Kim and I went to. I was in 9th grade.

Yesterday I read some nostalgic article about T.G.& Y. I worked there for 13 months when I was 16-17. My memories are not so pleasant; the boss I had then is still the worst boss I’ve ever had.

Lots of bits and pieces of my seven years at the machine shop in Enid, then the three years at various shops in OKC. The smell of burning metal, oily mists, heat, cold, Tim Weber dancing beside his machine and stopping everyone to witness to them.

Treehouses built in the field we called Junior Jungle, and the porno magazines we had hidden up there when I was about 13 or 14.

And pictures … like the wedding picture I had enlarged and framed a year or so ago. Shit. What happened to that skinny kid in the tinted glasses and white tuxedo? How did he get so damn old?

Hell, if I make it to 50 I suppose all this will be even worse.