by Roger P. Korth
Something went wrong! I looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t know who was looking back at me. Do you guys look at your cruise books or old photographs of you back in the Navy? Does that look like you?
The hair I had is halfway back on my head, and it’s either grey or white depending on how I feel. What grew up there is now growing out of my eyebrows, ears or nose, and it isn’t pretty.
My svelte body now looks like a bear ready for hibernation. My chest has settled to my belly, and my bicep muscles are hanging. My anchor tattoo looks like a gourd, and mom looks like wow.
The eagle-eyed lookout with hearing like a bat is now blind as a bat and can’t hear farts. Glasses? One pair for distance and another for reading. Tried bifocals but couldn’t adjust. The hearing aids are itchy and expensive and the wife tells me what I need to know.
Found out there are only two kinds of drivers, the old farts creeping in front of me and those bat-out-of-hell kids flying by. Where the hell is a cop when you want one? The wife won’t go in the camper anymore. Said if she wanted to cook on vacation, she can stay home or take a cruise. Besides that, she enjoys the sound of the ice maker in the motel. Sold the boat. Found out there are only two days you enjoy a boat, the day you buy it and the day you sell it.
Now I go to bed when we used to leave the ship for liberty. My get up and go has got up and went. It wasn’t like this when we were aboard. They don’t have Storekeepers anymore; now they’re Logistics something or other. I wonder if I’m too old to reenlist? ♫Anchors aweigh…♫
Tales of an Asia Sailor 
Reblogged this on DAVEBOOK.
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I’m in the same boat with you. If when I was much younger I’d known it hurts so much to get older I wouldn’t have been in such a big hurry to get there.
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Many times I wish I had made a career of the Navy. I did spend 22 years with it, 18 years of my Dadâs career, seing the world, then 4 on my own, visiting a few places I had lived growing up â the PI and Japan. Never did make it back to Great Britain or Morocco.
But I yearned for a life spent in the terrestrial âgreat outdoorsâ, and did succeed at that, all over the Americas as a wetlands and wildlife biologist. And my 4 years in Naval Aviation did trigger me to become a darn good commercial pilot.
Still,I miss those spectacular dawns and sundowns hundreds of miles at sea, and the visually stunning star filled skys.
Guess I couldnât have had it both ways! Do wish I could have avoided Agent Orange and itâs effects on my aging body.
Craig Wilcox
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Hang tough shipmate. It won’t get better. But your handling it! Don’t lit age whip you!
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I went to sleep when I was 35 and when I woke up, I was 75.
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They also changed some of the words to Anchors Aweigh
Sent from AT&T Yahoo Mail on Android
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