Something that I'd like to forget...

Rembrandt, Moses with the (Old) Tablets (1659)

As old as Moses with all his forgotten lore...

(Image from Wikipedia)

On Sunday afternoon as I was busy at my desk poring over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, and quaffing a beer to help me recall that lore, my wife and two kids were biking to a local supermarket to procure various necessities -- including, of course, some more of that essential, memory-enabling brew.

Having turned 50 this year, I need all the memory-boosting assistance that I can get ... though I'd like to forget that I've lived half a century already. It's one of life's little ironies, I suppose, that everybody wants to live a long life but that nobody wants to get old, and I'm just like everybody else on that score.

Sometimes, because my kids are so young -- Sa-Rah just 10 and En-Uk merely 8 -- I can fool myself into thinking that I'm still a spring chicken, too. And I do feel young -- still strong and, apparently, still quite healthy.

Reality, however, begs to differ, for there I was, my 50-year-old self, still poring over that forgotten lore as my wife and kids returned, laughing.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"You old man," said my wife, still laughing.

"What?"

"Old man," she repeated, stifling her laughter.

"I'm not deaf," I reminded her. "I just want to know why you're calling me old."

She laughed again and explained, "As we were returning from shopping, we passed a couple of kids near our apartment complex, and one of them said to his friend, 'Are they foreigners?' The friend said, 'No, not completely. The mother is Korean, but the kids live here with their American grandfather. There must be a father, too, but nobody's ever seen him.'"

Out of the mouth of babes and blunt Korean children...