Point of View: It’s the Haircut

“You’re one of the youngest old people I know,” my dentist said to me the other day as he excavated around a post in the hopes a filling would prevent the need for a crown. Before I could remonstrate with him — “One of the youngest? Please” — he was drilling away.

Still, that was music to my years, though lest I get cocky, he said, quoting from his grandmother, that I could not expect to get any respect in Florida, where we’re going this week, until I reached my 90s. Well, I thought, that would be something to strive for.

I think the youthful spirit he senses beneath the eroding gums has to do with the fact that I’ve covered local sports all these years and still like what I’m doing.

“I’ve never worked a day in my life,” an interviewee, who does work hard, said to me the other day. I knew what he meant — when you’re doing what you like to do it isn’t work, it’s fun.

The big downside so far lies in the realm of short-term memory. “They’re going to have to open a Lost and Found just for you,” Mary said the other day in holding up boots left behind at East Hampton Indoor Tennis. “But those aren’t mine,” I said, “mine had laces . . . I think.” We help each other: She can hear, I can smell . . . often we can pick up the threads of each other’s trains of thought, and we can at times be found lost in each other’s arms. It’s almost as if we’ve become one, though in case you’re having trouble making us out as we make out, I’m the bald one with the pointy nose.

I do hope I can keep my legs under me as I near the finish line. Then it can truly be written, as in the old days, “Death overtook him in his __-ieth year. . . .”

The answer, as the late Andy Neid­nig, who was finally outleaned, as it were, at the tape, said, is to keep moving. Still, I doubt that we’ll be moving to Florida. Kathy says it’s “Centereach with palm trees,” and that corruption (corruption of the flesh perhaps above all) is rife to such a degree that “it makes New York look like ‘Romper Room.’ ” Could it have something to do with latitude? The less corruption the farther north you get? But that leaves out Wall Street. Maybe it has to do with longitude then. At any rate, “Nunca falta un pelo en la sopa.” There’s always a worm in the apple.

While I wish I’d been somewhat older when young, being thought of as somewhat younger when old will do. John Wyche was actually rendered speechless for a moment when I told him the other day that I’d turned 75. “I know — it’s the haircut,” I said.