Will You Still Need Me When I'm 64?

"When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now. Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greeting, bottle of wine?"

Those lyrics, of course are from "When I'm 64" on the Beatles' immortal Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album released in June 1967, at the end of my junior year in college. Forty-three years later I still remember how I and many of my 20 and 21 year old friends said we could not imagine what it would be like to be 64.

Today I find out. Yep, Coach P is 64 today, May 19, 2010. And if anyone ever doubts the rewards of coaching, I can show him or her the birthday wishes posted on my Facebook pages from a number of my former players on both the Medford Strikers Xtreme and the Medford Strikers '81-'82 team, and from some parents from those teams.

Thanks to all for the good wishes. And what does 64 feel like? Well, I'm still out running, just not as far or as fast. And I'm still working. So not much different than 63. And anyway, it beats the alternative suggested by another song from back in my college days, this one called "My Generation," by The Who: "Hope I die before I get old."