The TV news this morning blared out a headline that “an elderly couple” was injured in a car wreck somewhere near here. Auto accidents are so common in these parts that the wreck didn’t really register with me.

But the words “elderly couple” crashed into me like a head-on collision.

What exactly constitutes an “elderly” couple these days?

I turned to Sandy and asked, “If we were involved in a news story like this would they describe us as ‘an elderly couple’?”

She didn’t hesitate.

“Yup.”

Elderly?

ELDERLY?

US?????

No! NO!

Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

Despite my denials, there is a certain truth to my “elderly-ness”. At 66 – almost 67 years old – I have already lived longer than most of my “elderly” relatives. I am 16 years older than my father lived to be and I thought of him as “an old man” when he died at the young age of 50. I have performed funerals for hundreds of “elderly” parishioners who were younger when they died than I am today.

It’s hard to admit.

I guess I AM “elderly.”

And yet I feel so young! I think of myself as young! In my mind’s eye I’m somewhere around 14 maybe 15 years old! I love to play with kids not so much because I like kids as because I see myself as one of them! When I surprise my grandkids with a “Ready, set, GO!” and race them down the hallway I fully expect to win. And I WOULD win every time if I didn’t pull a hamstring halfway down the hall.

So what, really, is my truth?

Best I can figure out is that I’m 15 going on 67.

That’s neither young nor old.

Maybe I can just settle on being “middle-aged.”