The Old Boys Book Club

By Bob Moses

For the GPHN

“What is your 10-year plan?”

These words slipped over my tongue, propelled by some misdirected inner pool cue trying to launch the 8-ball out of the side of my mouth. The cue had already connected with the 8-ball when the words registered on my brain, triggering my inner Oops! Too late. Horse, out of the barn.

“Great idea,” our leader, Larry, opined after soliciting a topic for our next gathering – a welcome respite from yet another 400-page bestseller. “Let’s do it,” he said.”

What the hell was I thinking, thought I, as the 8-ball plopped into my lap.

“I was just making a…” joke is what I started to say but was interrupted by my usually good friend Bill who chimed in his approval and added, “Let’s have Bob lead the discussion.”

Thanks, Bill.

Damn!

Attending our meeting that day were eight age-65-plus men, members of a group we call The Book Club, of which I am a relatively new member. We meet monthly. The books we have read stand side by side, in my living room bookcase. Selections include Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Williams, and The Soul of America by John Meacham. Wow! I may be old, but I’m still smart, they seem to shout.

We meet in the glassed-in lounge area of a private tennis club in a rooted Denver community with the city’s tallest and oldest trees. I am the third owner of a house built in 1927 in a neighborhood nearby. I grew up with a tennis racquet in hand, and my attention occasionally drifts from the tales and tribulations of my fellow book clubbers to the panoramic window overlooking Court 1, where a little white tennis ball zips back and forth across the net. I think to myself – “I should be out there. How the hell did I end up in here?”

The funny part about our book club is that we spend very little time talking about the books. Our gatherings last two and a half hours. Twenty minutes spent on the month’s selection is a long discussion. Mostly, we talk about ourselves. Our lives. Our loves. A recent adventure. Our challenges and worries. Our successes, which seem to be fewer as we grow older. Our ailments, on the opposite track. All grist for the mill.

I recently lamented our scant attention to the monthly read. I intended it as an affable admonition. Now it is just a matter-of-fact observation. The tales we old boys tell one another are more relatable and more humanly of interest than the future of the planet or the digital revolution. We are more interested in our own souls than the soul of the nation.

Any discussion of our 10-year plans lends itself to a reflective chuckle. Our average age is 73. Though our days may be numbered, the end is not in sight. Will we be here 10 years hence? Will we survive the coronavirus? Do we want to stick around if the end times arrive before we have taken our final bow?

“What is your plan for the next 10 years? I lobbed this query onto the table before us – littered with beer cans, one bottle of wine, and a variety of nibbles – not to mention 500-plus years and thousands of plans amongst us. I wanted to shout back: “I don’t want a plan for the rest of my life. I am the rest of my life!”

I have survived varied experiences of intentional self-improvement, scattered over decades. I did the EST training in the 1970s. In the 1990s I attended a four-day seminar led by “Iron John” poet Robert Bly. I have groaning shelves of self-help books: Think and Grow Rich; I’m Okay, You’re Okay; The Road Less Traveled; and (a perennial favorite) Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

The self-improvement culture suggests that we are not good enough; we must get better, smarter, thinner, wealthier, woke, whatever. It’s hard to feel good while telling yourself you’re not good enough – which, of course, makes you feel worse. Even worse at our age when there is so little time left! What if we don’t get there?

You’ve heard this before. Does that make it less than true? Today is the first day of the rest of your life. As I write, I am sitting in my sunroom. Plants of long acquaintance abound around me. The sun peeks through melting clouds, hastening away shadows, and portending better things.

Tomorrow afternoon, when my book brethren gather to talk about our 10-year plans, I will remind them of Robert Burns’ counsel in his poem “To a Mouse,” penned in 1786.

The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men

go oft awry,

And leave us only grief and pain,

For promised joy!

Tick tock. Tick tock. So goes the clock. Who can cuff the iron hand of time? What ere the future herald or forebode, it shall come what may.

We have today. If plan you must, plan for this day.

• There is something you do well. Do it today.

• There is something you want to do better. Yes! Do it today.

• There is something you want to do for another. Go! Do not delay.

• Would you prefer just to go out and play? Yes, by all means – Go! Play!

What more can I say?

Here is a plan

To stay in your prime,

Live your life

One day at a time.

Longtime Park Hill resident Bob Moses is a freelance writer and former newspaper publisher.