Early this week, I filled out an application for a handicapped parking placard and left it with my physician to fill out the info on my disabilities. It’s difficult to admit it, but I am a little wobbly on my pins. Years ago, I had hip replacement surgery; and, lately, my knees has resisted any attempt to stand up and walk normally. So now, at the age of eighty-one, I now regard myself as disabled. And it doesn’t look as if I’ll qualify for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

No matter. I realize I can no longer regard myself as a young man. In fact, I never really could. Ever since my brain tumor at the age of twenty-one, I have seen myself as somehow outside of time. Am I really over eighty years old? The numbers don’t lie, so I won’t either.

The only difference the handicapped placard will make is that parking will be much easier. I don’t mind walking a bit, but I hate having to walk three blocks to catch a train downtown from the Bundy-Exposition Station because construction workers building a giant condo complex are taking up all the non-handicapped spaces. And it will be nice not having to carry a roll of quarters in my car for parking meters. (In California, I can now park by any on-street parking meter without having to pay.)

Does that mean I am now officially an old fart?