WHAT I’VE LEARNED ON THE WAY TO 84

Seventy years ago I was impressed by breasts on girls 14 and older. Now, I have my own breasts. I’m not impressed. I’m depressed.

There’s no reason to feel guilty about taking a nap at 10:30 a.m. Just do it. This brief snooze in no way negates the need for your usual nap after lunch.

When you reach into the cookie jar and two cookies are stuck together, do not separate them. That would be discrimination. And also stupid.

Prostate jokes aren’t nearly as funny as they were 30 years ago.

If my medical folder at my primary care doctor gets any thicker, the nurse is going to have to use both hands and maybe a back brace to carry it into the examination room.

So what if nearly every night from eight to nine you yawn constantly? You know around 9:10 you will get a second wind and will stay up, as usual, until 11:45.

If by mistake you throw in the garbage the washed and trimmed parsley you wrapped in a paper towel, it’s okay to retrieve it and put it on top of the lamb burgers, but your wife doesn’t need to know about this.

There are certain words, no matter how many times you look them up, that will never stick in your brain. My words in this category include “synecdoche.”

It’s no big deal if you tell yourself every morning, “I can’t have dessert every night” and then when eight o’clock rolls around you prove, again, that you can.

When I was still working in news, there was probably an 84-year-old retired journalist yelling at the radio and TV about the lack of good writing and editing and the absence of any standards.

A size 36 pair of pants with an expandable waistband really isn’t a 36, but there’s no harm in thinking it is.

If you see a guy on a bike who looks like your banker, and you roll down your car window and say, as he passes by, “you’re a cutie” but then realize he wasn’t your banker, you don’t have to tell your wife about this either.

When you’ve spent a life addicted to wisecracks, most of them bad wisecracks, it’s going to be tough for your family to know when you’re genuinely senile.

If you always wear black a T-shirt, it’s harder to see the chocolate syrup on it.