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It's gotta be the beard.
Surely, it can't be the wrinkles. They're more like the Modest Canyon, not etched Grand Canyon deep.
It can't be the pops and creaks when I walk. The little stoop should muffle those.
It can't be the way I dress or the way I talk. I found the threads that were so groovy in high school at Goodwill, and I still can sing all the lyrics to Three Dog Night's greatest hits.
So it's gotta be my snow-white beard. Though I can't figure why the little twerps just assume that white hair means multiple laps around the calendar.
It happened the other day when my wife and I stopped at a fast-food place for a bit of caffeine. Being a gentleman (stop snickering; that wasn't one of the jokes), I ordered her coffee for her.
"How much do you pay for coffee?" I asked Terry when I handed her the cup.
"For a large one like that, I'd guess about $2."
I looked at the receipt. "Sixty-three cents."
"How'd you do that?"
A tear trickled from the corner of my eye. "The little girl behind the counter gave me the senior discount."
"Great. I'm going to have you get my coffee all the time."
"The little girl didn't card me or anything. She just looked at me and gave me the senior discount. Why? I'm not a senior yet."
Terry's mouth twitched. Maybe she had to sneeze. She recovered and said, "At this place, the senior discount begins at age 55. You qualify. You're overqualified."
"But you're older than I am. By three months. And you've NEVER been given the senior discount."
Have you ever noticed how it's difficult to simply voice a misery or two without suddenly quadrupling your suffering? I rat-a-tat-tatted a disclaimer as fast as I could backpedal: "Not that you look like you're older than 55, obviously not, dear. Early 50s -- I mean, early 40s at the most. Maybe 30s. You're youthful."
I paused for breath. "But I'm youthful, too. Right?"
"Let's review for clues," she said. "What did you call your order taker?"
"A little girl."
"Uh huh."
I pointed toward the counter. "She can't be more than 11 or 12."
Terry shook her head. "She graduated from college. Two years ago."
"Wow. She's that advanced?"
"No. You're that bad at judging age. Especially in the mirror."
"Huh?
"To further that thought, your perception of her age is a mirror of her perception of you to her."
I shrugged. As usual, I couldn't understand what my wife was talking about. Older people always talk over my gray head like that.
What I do know is that Scripture says, "The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head." (Provers 20:29) And baby, I am growing prettier all the time!
I ran my fingers through my hair. "You better put away that analogical mirror before you see that you're not nearly as beautiful as I am."
"Say what, old man?"
A beautiful thought struck my gray head. "So this all means stores charge me less?"
"That's about the color of it."
It can't be the wrinkles. Nor the pops and creaks. Or even my sense of current events. It's gotta be the beard. That beautiful white beard with its gloriously gray ching-ching. I'll take it.
Hey, wait a minute. Senior discounts don't apply to paychecks, do they? Maybe I can get a deal on dye.
— Go shopping with Old Man Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook. Meet him and Terry at 6 p.m. Monday at the Ashtabula Public Library.