I’ve been rather busy these last few months, traveling, hanging out with friends, sort of rediscovering who I am and who I used to be. So, admittedly, my times of leisure have been few and far between. As a result, my magazines, books I want to read and other periodicals have been piling up around the house. The problem is I am usually willing to toss them out except for the fact that there is one article that I just have to read. So, one month becomes two and two becomes three, and before I know it, I have a mountain of reading material to sift through, all the while wondering if I ever will.

Well, it is the holiday season and like every year I have stockpiled a few weeks of vacation with plans to take off a chunk of time and do nothing but relax, enjoy the season and catch up with all the things I’ve allowed to linger for so long. At least, that is my plan. So, in a few weeks I plan to take at least one day to put on my reading glasses, sit in a corner with a pile of magazines and a lamp complete with a 150 watt bulb and go nuts with the reading.

I realized how far behind I am tonight when I was perusing what I thought was the latest copy of Playboy and saw that it was actually the October edition. It is true, the older we get, the faster time flies right past us. I keep wanting to stop the clock for a while, just so I can take a breath, but it doesn’t work that way. Anyway, I came across the interview portion of the magazine and on this particular month the interview was with Keith Olbermann. I like Keith Olbermann for the most part. He’s intelligent, opinionated, ballsy. He can be a little too snide for my taste sometimes, but hey, whatever. He’s no Bill O’Reilly, that’s for sure — and thank God for that.

Anyway, the part of the interview that caught my eye was the fact that Olbermann, who is 48, is dating a woman 25 years his junior. When asked about it, Olbermann makes the following statement:

When you’ve been through as much tumult as I have, you learn that age is way down on the list of what’s important in a relationship. The first question is, Can you stand being with this person? And the second is, For how long” If the answers are “yes” and “indefinitely”, the rest doesn’t matter.

You know what’s funny? In my past I have fallen for women who have been older than me. One, I recall, was fifteen years older. Another was eleven years older. Back then, I didn’t see one reason why it couldn’t have worked. Now…I realize that it would have been doomed from the start. The fact was I was in a different place than those two ladies. They would have devoured me and spit out the bones if they had been so inclined. Lucky for me they were merciful. But I do have to admit that when I wasn’t blindly in love with someone, age did matter to me. Up until recently I think it’s mattered more than I realized. I guess I always told myself that I could never date a woman who didn’t remember the television show “Taxi”. Shallow, I know. But I think that was just the tip of the iceberg. I just couldn’t imagine having very much to talk about with someone who was that much younger than me. And 25 years younger?? Forget it. Well, first of all, if I dated someone 25 years younger, she’d be ten and Chris Hansen would be showing up in some kitchen while I sat butt naked on a bar stool eating an oatmeal cookie. But being 48 and dating a 23 year old. Really?

Remember the movie “Manhattan”? Woody Allen’s character is dating this woman who isn’t even a woman yet, not legally anyway. And he feels so guilty about it. He makes the remark that he is dating a woman knowing that he is old enough to beat up her father. But the thing was, the Muriel Hemingway character seemed more mature than Woody Allen’s character. And she was definitely more together than the neurotic Diane Keaton character that Allen’s character falls for. But Woody is so overwrought with the idea of dating such a younger woman that he gives her up only to regret it later. And I regretted it for him too. Because even if it wasn’t meant to go on forever — and Hemingway’s character even states that she believes relationships are meant to be different lengths but maybe not forever — they were good together. They ate Chinese in bed and laughed and introduced one another to different things. The Diane Keaton character, who was more Allen’s age, was completely unsettled, lacked self-confidence, didn’t know what she wanted. And yes, technically his character was a pedophile. But fiction did not stray that far from reality. And as sick as you may think his marrying his adopted daughter may be…they’ve been married nearly ten years.

How young is too young? *Shrug* I figure, as long as both parties are 18 or above, and there is respect and love, why not go for it? Just be cognizant of Hemingway’s theory in the movie. As wonderful as the relationship may be, perhaps it isn’t meant to be forever. Maybe it is only to last a few months, perhaps a few years…who knows? But that could be said for any relationship. I guess the question really becomes “how heavy do you want this thing to be?” Do we have children together? Do we buy a home together? Do we bind ourselves to one another for the rest of our lives, or is just a case of two ships passing briefly in the dark of night? It is what it is and we don’t try to make it more than it should be. Is that it?

Age is nothing but a number. It doesn’t really mark maturity or intelligence or one’s true potential. All it can really be used for is an excuse not to take that leap.

And the great thing about classic television nowadays is that all the great shows are available on DVD. So what if she hasn’t seen Taxi? Just pop in a DVD and voila. Instant time travel.

Excuse, excuses. I’m full of ‘em.