Hard-earned wisdom of age

It happened once again.

The clock kept ticking and another birthday came and went – just like it does every year.

I have been roaming this Earth for a little more than half a century, soaking up knowledge and storing it in the vast intellectual vault that is my brain.

OK, I will admit a lot of that knowledge is absolutely worthless. Did you know cockroaches have teeth in their stomachs to break down their food?

Now, you do.

Just another useless tidbit of information I have archived over the years. I could barely remember the information in a book I am studying, but I do know all bananas have a very low level of natural radiation.

But I am much wiser now than I was 20 or 30 years ago.

There is a difference between being smart and being wise.

Smart will help you figure out quantum mechanics, wise will help you realize you are not smart enough to figure out quantum mechanics.

There have been many instances when I have passed my hard-earned wisdom on to my children – only to have it completely ignored.

Not because it was poor advice, but because teenagers know everything in the world that has ever been worth knowing.

Junior bought a truck a while back. A great, big, four-wheel drive that is much more truck than he required.

A co-worker asked me why he needed a truck that big.

“He didn't 'need' one that big, he 'wanted' one that big.”

And to a teen, want and need are very often the same thing.

While the truck is in pretty decent shape, it needed new tires before long

Wisdom told me the rubber would be expensive. And when I mentioned that to Junior.

He replied, “I know.”

I told him they would cost more than $1,000.

“I know.”

I told him with the bank loan, insurance and his social life, coming up with that kind of money will be hard.

“I know.”

Well, the time has come for the rubber to hit the road and that rubber is going to cost a bundle.

When I mentioned it is time to replace all four tires, he replied “Ya, but they are expensive.”

To which I had the great pleasure of responding with, "I know."

My son is very smart, but he is not very wise.

What young lad is, really?

I wasn't at that age.

It has taken five decades to accumulate such a vast wealth of knowledge and intelligence. Well, knowledge anyway, I have never claimed to have an abundance of intelligence.

It is a shame you cannot download all that wisdom to your children, saving them from making he same mistakes you made at that age.

But because it is the first time they have done or experienced something, teens think it is something completely new and us old people wouldn't understand.

What the kiddies don't appreciate is us old people have already walked that path, we have already experienced what they are now just discovering.

I am sure my father wished he could have injected his wisdom into my teenage brain, just like his father and his father before him.

But before you can be old and wise, you must be young and stupid.

I admit, I took the stupid part to new heights (well, new to me anyway), but what teen didn't do stupid things in the name of adventure and excitement?

Wisdom teaches you it is not smart to try to jump a barbed-wire fence with your dirt bike. The stupidity of youth says "Go for it, dude."

Wisdom also knows new tires for a big truck are expensive, eating fast food several times a week is not good for you and the world will not stop rotating if you do not get the latest and greatest gadget.

Not all old people are wise, and I have some peers who are still making some very dumb decisions. Fortunately, I am now wise enough to not make the same choices

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.