I turned 54 back in July.

In my mind it was just another birthday.

Although I know that I can’t escape the march of time, sometimes I need a little reminder that I’m getting older and things don’t always work quite they way they once did.

A recent incident brought that point home to me and have become quite dependent upon them for any important documents that need reading. I see a lot of those in a day’s time.

For years I’ve worn reading glasses and thank goodness my wife works for an optometrist because she’s kept me pretty well supplied.

I generally try to keep a pair in the car, and another at work as well as a couple at home.

Over the years, I’ve managed to accumulate a good stash of reading glasses to fit my needs, but one Sunday I went to work I realized I didn’t any handy.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope with trying to put together pages and read them for mistakes without glasses so I decided to go to local drugstore and buy a pair to get me through the night.

That turned out to be a big mistake.

For one thing, do you have any idea how hard it is to read the fine print on anything without glasses especially for people like me who are sight challenged?

At the time I was in a hurry so I found a pair that fit my general prescription need, purchased them and used them to get me through the night.

After that time, I occasionally pulled them out of the drawer when I was too lazy to go get a pair out of the car or couldn’t find them in my coat. I would wear them for the better part of the day and none of my co-workers ever said a word about them.

I have to wonder if my co-workers needed glasses themselves or just wanted to see how long I would walk around wearing woman’s glasses.

One day this summer, my son and I stopped by the office one day.

I don’t know the reason for the visit, but I do know I needed to pull those “desperation” glasses back out of the drawer and use them to read something.

That’s when my son looked at the glasses and started laughing. I knew he was laughing at me because I’ve heard that laugh lots of times.

He looked directly at me and said, “Do you know you’re wearing women’s glasses?”

I protested adamantly and said they weren’t women’s glasses.

“Then why do they have flowers on them?” he asked.

I took them off and found out he was right; the glasses did have pretty little flowers on them.

I think I should have been wearing glasses the day I went and bought them, but then I wouldn’t have been out shopping for glasses in the first place, would I?

I still have those “desperation’ glasses, but it’s unlikely that anyone else is going to see me wear them again.

And I have no intention of telling anyone including my co-workers who have watched me walking around wearing glasses with pretty little flowers on them, which desk drawer I keep them in even if they might need “desperation” glasses some time.

Cummins spared no expense or fanfare Tuesday morning when it came to unveiling its newest product line – a high-speed diesel engine.

The announcement was made at the Seymour Engine Plant, where the QSK95 better known as as the Hedge Hog be built in the coming years.

The event was attended by Cummins customers from around the world, employees and the press.

It was easy to tell that company officials are excited about the new engine line, which will eventually include a natural gas version.

And there’s a lot of good news that comes with Columbus-based company’s decision to build the Hedge Hog in Seymour, including 200 production jobs and $110 million in investment.

The unveiling began with Tom Linebarger, Cummins’ president and chief operating officer, talking about the new product and ended a few speeches later when a bright red Hedge Hog rose from the beneath the floor and was uncovered to dramatic music.

The sight was amazing.

But it concerned me a little when I saw the size of the QSK95.

For one thing, it’s bigger than my car, and at 27,000 pounds, the Hedge Hog weighs a lot more than the Honda Fit I drive. It also has 16-cylinders, which is four times the number of cylinders in the engine of my little car. And there’s a 20-cylinder version that can produce 5,000 horse power in the works.

It’s too early to say how many Hedge Hogs will be built in a year’s time at Seymour, but hopefully they will be built here for a long time to come.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks around my house since my wife and I deposited my son at that university I won’t name way up there in West Lafayette.

Our nest is empty now, and we both are learning to deal with it in our separate ways. She still gets pretty emotional about it at times, but I’ve dealt with the issue in the past when both my older children grew up, got married and had kids of their own.

I have to admit I miss having him around every day, but I don’t miss what seemed like the daily battles to make sure he was getting everything accomplished to prepare for his first year of college. And to keep his mom and I happy. Especially his mom because when he didn’t follow through on something she wanted done, you know who heard about it.

I don’t know how parents did it in the past, but it sure is nice to be able to send him a text message whenever I have a little time and then get an almost immediate response back from him. I talk to him several times a day that way, and it’s great to hear how his day is going. In fact, we probably talk more now that he’s no longer at home.

And sometimes he gets bored and starts the text conversation with me. I love those times.

If the truth be known, I suspect that he would rather talk to me by text than to actually hear my voice.

The first couple of nights he spent away from home, I decided I was going to send him a nightly goodnight message. The first time it went well. An issue cropped up the second night.

I sent the message to the next person in line in my address book instead of my son. It’s not the first time I’ve ever done that, and generally the person receiving the message sends back a text saying “What?”

My only excuse is it was late, and I was in bed and my eyesight’s not as good as it once was.

It’s a good thing the person I sent it to is a pretty good friend whose first name begins with a C, and he has a good sense of humor because he sent back a reply saying “Good night. I love you too.” It’s also a good thing he’s confident enough in his masculinity that he has no problem putting an arm around a guy and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

I didn’t even discover the error until a few days later when I was erasing some of my messages.

I’ve yet to hear from this friend about the message, but I’m sure I will somewhere down the road.

It’s also a good thing it wasn’t another woman in my address book, or I might have had trouble explaining that one to my wife.

I’ve been an avid recycler for quite some time now, but a recent news item I read has me rethinking my role in trying to save the environment.

I think I inherited my passion for recycling or reusing things from my Grandpa Garrett. He once saw me getting rid of a storm door that was falling apart. I saw little value in what I felt like was a piece of junk, but he said the door still had a lot of usable parts, and I needed to store it in the garage for future use.

I don’t think I ever used a part off it, but I jumped on the recycling band wagon shortly after it became fashionable because I think keeping everything out of the landfill that we can is important.

For years I drove my wife crazy by letting newspapers, glass bottles, metal cans and plastic bottles pile up around the house until I could take them to a recycling bin somewhere. She was always coming up with a plan to keep the recycables organized, but I still managed to make quite a mess at times.

When Brownstown implemented a curbside recycling program, I was more than happy, I was ecstatic. And with each passing year, it’s easier to recycle just about anything, so I still have some stuff sitting around at times waiting to be carted off.

But as I said earlier that recent news article kind of bugged me.

Here’s the headline: Ohio woman dies after falling into recycling bin

It seems 62-year-old Sheila Decoster fell into a recycling bin at her home in East Toledo and died of positional asphyxia, meaning the position she landed in obstructed her airways.

There’s a lot of ways to die, but I never dreamed that someone could die trying to do their part to save the environment. Life’s just not fair.

I recently won a shopping concession from my wife.

I no longer have to go into a certain department store that in my book is designed solely for women.

I won’t name the store, but there’s one on the south side of Columbus. The store contains no sporting goods section. There’s no automotive department, and I not real impressed with their electronics section. There’s often a tiny little toy section during the holidays. There’s just not much for a man to do there unless he wants to shop for some clothing or perhaps some shoes.

Wait a minute, men and shopping just don’t go together at all. If I need clothes or shoes, I go buy clothes and shoes. I don’t shop for either.

Many times in the past, my wife has drug me into the store especially around the holidays.

Recently, however, we forgot to pay a charge card bill we had with the store on time, and the next month’s bill contained a $25 late charge on a $52 bill.

I must confess, I blew my top because of what I still think is an excessive late fee. I told my wife she could no longer shop at the store after the bill was paid even though I knew that wouldn’t fly.

Later, I sent the company an e-mail, using my wife’s e-mail account, and told them she (I) was cutting up her store charge card because of the excessive late charge and that she (I) would no longer be doing business with the company.

A couple of days later she received an e-mail from the company apologizing for the late charge. The company, however, didn’t refund our $25 late fee, but agreed to credit our account by $25.

I’m taking credit for getting our $25 back, even though we didn’t really get it back.

The $25 credit also means she’s going to have to make a trip to the store in the future.

I on the other hand have had my last dealings with the company, and that includes going into that store.

At least until my wife says I have to take her there.

I’ve covered the police beat for most of the 25-plus years I’ve spent in the newspaper business.

During that time, I had to write about a litany of crimes from child abuse and child molesting to robbery and battery to, in more recent years, several murders.

I rarely have the chance to speak to those accused of committing a crime, and it’s also rare that I have the opportunity to speak with any of the victims.

I recently, however, had the chance to spend time talking with the 80-year-old Seymour man who was beaten and robbed earlier this year by a younger acquaintance looking for money and drugs.

I’ll have to say the man was a lot more forgiving about the incident than I would have been. In fact, he even found some things to chuckle about while discussing what happened to him and how he managed to escape with his life.

He was cleared about one thing. He thought his assailant needed to spend some time in jail especially considering his past crimes. He also said he believed that his attacker would have likely killed him if he hadn’t been able to eventually find a way to escape.

But this man, who still bore some of the bruises from his experience, also told me the first thing he would do if he saw the man who beat him again was to say that he forgave him.

It may be the Christian thing to do, but I’m not sure I could be so forgiving.

More than nine months ago our family suffered a tragic loss when our little Bichon Frise, Rookie, was attacked and killed by a pit bull while my wife was walking him in Ewing.

I know he was only a dog, but Rookie had been a part of our family from the time he was a pup five years earlier.

Even though I’m well past the age of 50, I’ll have to admit I shed a tear or two when Rookie died.

We’ve moved on, however, and less than two months after we loss him, we acquired Gizmo. Gizmo is a Maltese that had been left at a rescue shelter in Seymour.

Unlike Rookie, who was Mommy’s boy, Gizmo is my dog. I don’t know why dogs take to certain people in a family, but they sure do.

Gizmo developed some kind of cough while we were on Spring Break so we took him to a vet in Salem a couple of days after we came home. That’s because the coughing was keeping all of us, including my teenage son who sleeps through every thing, up at night.

I thought it might have been “kennel cough” because we had to board him while we were gone. The vet said no, he’d seen a lot of dogs developing coughs this spring. It was something to do with sinus drainage and allergies, he said.

After a quick peek inside Gizmo’s throat, the vet looked at us and said “Do you know what this dog really needs?’

My wife and I both said no, and we both wanted to add we wouldn’t be there if we knew what he really needed. There’s a time, however, for silence and this was it if we what Gizmo to stop keeping us up at night.

“He needs shot of a whiskey,” the vet said emphatically.

After seeing the puzzled looks on our faces, he quickly explained that giving Gizmo a shot of whiskey is the same thing as giving a person that good old-time remedy for whatever ails you, the Hot Toddy.

My wife is much more familiar with the Hot Toddy than I am because her Dad often stops by to make her one when she’s feeling a little poorly. I just know a Hot Toddy needs whiskey to make it work.

The vet wound up his four or five minute consultation with us by giving Gizmo a quick shot of antibiotic and some pills and then off he went to his see his next patient.

The first time Gizmo started coughing, I gave him a couple of CCs of whiskey. His initial reaction was much like the rest of us – yuck. But he sure did a lot of licking of his mouth in the next few minutes. He’s had several more shots since that first one and they really do seem to help with the coughing.

A couple of times lately, we’ve caught him standing at the kitchen counter where the bottle of whiskey’s sitting. And then he starts coughing.

Do they have Alcoholic Anonymous meetings for dogs?

My Dad celebrated his 84th birthday on Wednesday.

For the record, I love and respect the man. He likely wouldn’t earn any honors as World’s Best Dad, but I don’t think anyone deserves that distinction.

But there have been many times that he’s come to my rescue. He knows how to fix a lot of things, and I still call him now when I run into some problem I can fix.

We don’t always agree on things, but to each his own. I know he keeps up with the news and knows what’s going on in the world. I hope I can do that five years from now.

I’m not trying to make him sound like a saint because I know he’s not.

For one thing, he’s a man and just like the rest of us, he’s totally capable of screwing up.

One of the biggest screw-ups I can remember is the time he went into a bathroom at Dead Horse Point State Park near Moab, Utah.

I don’t know if he was paying attention or not, but my brother and I noticed that the bathroom locked from the outside. You know the rest of the story.

Ask him even now, and he’ll tell you “those scrappers” locked me in the bathroom.

I’m sure that wasn’t the first time he wanted to tan us and it wasn’t the last.

Speaking of screwing up and tanning, I’m 53 years old and have always managed to avoid visiting a tanning bed.

For one thing, I firmly believe that God provides me with all my needs.

For instance, I’ve always refused to water my grass. If God wanted my grass to be green, he would provide some rain. Same thing with the tan.

But my wife has been saying I should try it out so I finally relented and decide to see if I could get a jumpstart on my tan.

So I entered the tanning salon with my wife, and she gave me a quick run down of the process.

But she left out one part. She forgot to tell me you had to close the lid so I wound up half cooked. She also gets a good laugh every time she tells the story to someone else. And it seems to me that’s she told a lot of people.

As I wrote before, my son should be going off to college in the fall. That’s if he can find the money to do so, and he can survive a few more months with his Mom and Dad and the dog.

We’ll miss him.

But we won’t miss all the battles we’ve had with him in the past few years as he’s grown into a young man sometimes capable of making his own decisions and other times not. If you’re a parent of a teen you know what kind of battles I’m talking about.

Can I visit and stay overnight with my friends at Muncie or Bloomington? Why do I have to take the dog out? Do I have to fill out that scholarship paperwork right now? Why are you always piling things on?

But there’s one area of our are home life that’s really going to suffer when he heads off to school.

I don’t know what my wife and I are going to do when the next “great” piece of new technology that finds its way into our lives. And then the one after that.

I recently purchased a new cell phone at a local store, and it was a good thing I took him along with me.

When the saleswoman started talking about our contract coming to an end, and the new 2-year deal replacing it, I was clueless. My head was spinning. I just wanted a cellphone that worked, one that had large enough numbers that I could read them, and one I that wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg.

My son gave me a look that said “Dad don’t worry I’ve got this under control. I’m here for you.”

He had to sit and translate everything she was saying about the cellphone he picked out for me and our future cellphones futures.

Of course, he’s hoping those plans include a new Droid somewhere in the near future. You don’t really think he gave up and hour or two of his day just to help ole Dad do you?

My work also recently gave me an iPad, which is part of the newspaper industry’s efforts to find ways of delivering the news faster and more efficiently and conveniently to you our readers.

Again, I had to turn to my son to even get the thing to work. He started talking to me about signing up for iTunes, and the need to synch my iPad with iTunes, and again my head was spinning. He started talking about syncing this and that, and told me synching really just means the iPad is looking for upgrades. My first thought was Lord keep me from sinking any further into this pool of unknown technology.

My second thought was why couldn’t they just say upgrading instead of coming up with a different word for the process I do know a little something about.

And the other night, my wife was flipping through the channels on the television and she made some kind of mistake with the remote and the television stopped working.

I heard her say, “When in doubt, hit exit.” She did, and the TV started working right again.

When I asked her what that was about she said that’s what our son always told her to do if the remote control and the television are messed up. It’s one of the many words of wit and wisdom he’s leaving us with.

My wife isn’t the only one who struggles with synching the remote with the cable and the television. I do battle with the system on a daily basis.

I just hope when he goes off to college that he keeps his cellphone real handy because we’re going to need him a lot.

Now if we can just figure out how to use our cellphones well enough to get into contact with him.

This is a bittersweet time around our household.

In about seven months or so my 18-year-old son should be heading off to college.

Then my wife and I are going to have to start dealing with the dreaded “empty nest syndrome.”

My son’s been preparing us for this event ever since they day he began driving about two and a half years ago.

Little by little the time he spends at home has been dwindling. After he started working and hooked up with a member of the fairer sex, it seems the only time he’s around anymore is to eat, sleep, take a quick shower and rile the dog up.

There are times I know I’m going to miss having him around every day. And there are other times when I can’t wait for the day my wife and I can make a decision and follow through on it without consulting him first.

Here’s a prime example of why I sometimes feel those days can’t come soon enough.

A week ago Saturday, he called my wife from work and asked her what we planned to do that evening. My wife told him we had no plans.

He said that he and his girlfriend were going to stay home and play cards with us. We (of course) needed to provide the food.

My wife and I discussed what she was going to make for dinner, and she came up with “macho nachos.” That’s an old favorite of mine that we haven’t had in years (probably because he really doesn’t like our home-style brand of nachos), and the idea sounded great to me.

My son then called and asked my wife what was on the menu. She told him, and he said he thought cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese sounded better, and besides that he wasn’t sure his girlfriend would like nachos.

After a brief discussion about him running our lives with my wife on the way to the store, guess what we picked up for dinnner?

That’s right, cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese.