Youth! How Hastily Wast Thou Spent!

How I pine for those carefree days when I was seventeen! I weighed a mere hundred twenty pounds and was rather lean! I thought I could mount an Arab steed and conquer the world! Before me bold adventures beyond the horizon lay unfurled! In my precarious youth I never dreamed of growing old. I assumed I'd be seventeen forever, truth be told! But suddenly in the blink of an eye I was thirty-five, Then I reached fifty, so stealthily did it arrive! I hardly turned around and suddenly I was sixty-five. Grandson Zach exclaimed, "But Grandpa, you're still alive!" A reward upon reaching that exalted rung of maturity, Was that I became eligible for medicare and social security! So quickly did I reach the age of seventy, a septuagenarian. I might as well hang around and become an octogenarian! Though I enjoy the privileges of the golden years, forsooth, I'd much prefer the unpretentious days of my youth! Oh, feckless youth, how hastily thou wast spent. I clasped thee to my bosom and was so content. But anon you abandoned me much too soon. I really think that was so inopportune! Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired (© All Rights Reserved)