On June 27, I reached 70 years old.
I find joy in that milestone because I’m still here, especially when it is attached to the occasional comment: “Man, you don’t look 70 at all.”
My original plan for this column was to write about good and bad experiences along the way. Instead, I focused on happiness and the smiles during my approximately 25,550 days on Earth.
It was always a good morning when I ate breakfast with my grandmother, enjoying scrambled eggs, grits, bacon and my energy drink — Luzianne coffee and chicory. Our conversations were short, but entertaining because she wouldn’t have her beautiful false teeth in.
I was proud to show her evidence of all the roaches I had killed during the night with the Flit gun (Look it up). I didn’t know that was not a good thing.
I would be happy when my cousin would come over and spend time with me. He taught me how to read and do a little math before I entered school. The reading would help me envision places far away from my three-room shotgun house.
I felt uncontrollable joy when I won our weekly second grade spelling bee. The same girl won them all, except one. She misspelled "island." That day has always been monumental.
When I was around 9 years old, my Little League coach awarded me a jersey. With 11- and 12-year-olds ahead of me, I never got on the field. But that shirt meant I was a part of something. I cherished the jersey.
I loved the leap to college because I was on my own. It gave me a chance to talk to people from places I had never been. Their descriptions of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, New Orleans and many small Louisiana towns were music to my ears.
I got to write news, sports and a column in the Southern University newspaper, The Digest. People would read my words and tell me about them. Once in a sports story, I said another team’s chances of beating Southern’s football team “was like the measurements of Diana Ross: Slim, hardly and none.”
My later joy was getting a job as a news reporter for The State-Times newspaper, the former evening paper in Baton Rouge. I was the only Black reporter at the time, and many Black people in town said they were proud of me.
I won a few awards for writing, and those things made me happy, especially after my executive editor once told me that they were taking it slow with me because I went to Southern University, a historically Black college and university in Baton Rouge.
Not long after that, I won three first-place awards at one time. That was after I had won a couple in earlier years. He apologized to me in front of my fiancée. Happy moment!
But none of that really mattered in the long run. All I ever wanted was a family where there was love and togetherness with my wife and children. Money and prestige were secondary. I have now been married for over 40 years with two children and four grandchildren.
I also have dozens of friends, especially those that graduated with me from McKinley High School in Baton Rouge. They are my second family. And it makes me happy that we give food to families at Thanksgiving and gift needy children with money at Christmas.
While I was considering how to write this, I watched 10 episodes of the cartoon “Bluey” with my nearly 2-year-old granddaughter. I witnessed her 7-year-old sister devour ramen noodles. I didn’t know what ramen was until I was in my 20s. Earlier my 8-year-old granddaughter called me a “Dip Stick.” (I call all my grandchildren that, but this time she got me first).
My 26-year-old grandson walked in the house after clearing away a lot of boxes and other stuff from the back of the house and stored it.
Then, as he and my daughter were preparing to leave, he said, “I love you, Pop.”
Yes, that is as positive as turning 70 can get.