Jeff Jarvis, educator, blogger, author of What Would Google Do?, podcaster and much more has written extensively about his prostate, and while I couldn't do that, I do admire that he can. This isn't about prostate problems. Nor is it about impotence, another strong male fear. I'm counting on electronic, not chemical progress to solve that problem.

No, what happened to me was a simple, everday thing that has moved me from one age group into another. I had a near brush with this insidious temporal phenomenon a few years ago.  Yesterday, at around 5PM in the outskirts of Bordeaux, I got on a crowded tram car. As I looked in vain for a seat, a young woman asked me if I would like to sit down, vacated the seat and I was forced to enter a new, "golden" age by accepting it!

Je suis bouleversé...

I just got off the phone with my brother who is 6 years older than me. When I was 18, he was 24, or 33% older then me. Now he's only 10% older and we agree that time keeps moving faster. Is it because there's so much less of it left to live? No, seriously, think about this for a moment. I was reminded yesterday, when I walked in the strong sunlight of the animal pleasure of the sun on my back when I was living in Minnesota just about 50 years ago. Time was infinitely long then. Later, the years moved on, but they took their time. For the past 30 years, each year moved by more swiftly than the last. Now the days, no matter how long, no matter how productive, no matter how good or bad, in the blink of an eye.

We also talked about a concept I imagined a few years ago, when a young woman asked me for directions ona Paris street. I realized that she had infinite trust in me, it was like she was talking to an elderly uncle or her grandfather. And with that beautiful, reassured smile, I was out of the running, represented no danger, no adventure at all. "Shoot me now!" we agreed, but with a smile. Because we admit to each other that inside these bodies, and I'm positive it's identical for males and females, inside the shell, we're all 16 years old, still in the running, still predators in the one game that counts for the survival of he species, the biological imperative that has for the most part outlived its usefulness.

Look at any movie for the middle of the 20th century. Look how old the characters look and dress and act when they are in their 30's. At my age, people were out to pasture if they were still alive and mobile. Today we live and work much longer, but this was only about a half century ago. In the 18th and 19th century, people often died in their thirties! We talk about "Internet years" but imagine if your entire life was lived out in 3 decades with not even a telephone. News travelled slowly, if at all. So much was not known. The law reined only as far as a man could ride in a day on horseback. Talk about security lines, people got on ships that took 6 weeks to get the same distance we fly in 6 hours.

So, in 102 years from now, in 2112, when my great grandchild is writing in her blog (yeah, right) what lyric will she be quoting? Probably not Steve Miller or anyone else we've heard of today.