People are always talking about pyramid builders.

I was one from about the age of two. I lived in the sand hills, a sand box thousands of square miles in size. Whenever I filled my hands up with sand and let it slowly fall out of them, I would build a pyramid.

I don’t understand why a pyramid is such a big deal. Skyscrapers are all pyramids, that is to say they are broader on the bottom than on the top.

So a pyramid, that miracle of miracles, has a broad bottom and a sharp top.

They’re everywhere.

Those who are bowled over by the idea that pyramids show up everywhere would impress me more if they could find ancient buildings where the BOTTOM was a point and the TOP was wide. Just one case in the Valley of the Kings where the point was on the bottom would convince me that they had advanced building techniques.

Joe Ororke says,

“I wish you wouldn’t call yourself “old man.” I’m as old as you and older and I won’t call myself “old man.” You got at least twenty years before you call yourself “old man.” And that’s just an older man. My youngest son calls me “old man.” He’s got a respect problem. I should give him a copy of your book “Why Johnny Can’t Think.” Maybe he’ll learn something from it. At the moment, he’s like so many people I know. He knows it all. Where have I heard that before? Sorry to hear you’re feeling under the weather, old chap. Do recovery quickly. Please. We’re out here waiting to hear your next bushel of knowledge. Not wisdom, mind you. Knowledge. As you mentioned, there is a difference. Wisdom, in my not humble opinion, is not often found among professors. Babbling,yes. Wisdom, no. Knowledge sometimes. Until it changes the next day. If we get lucky you might tell us more about the Beachhead. There’s got to be more than a Beachhead in this movie. We can’t just establish the Beachhead and linger there getting a suntan. The Beachhead is just a temporary gig. You know what we gotta do next, don’t you? Something Bill Rusher wouldn’t do. ”

Middle age starts officially at forty but has no official end. But when you hit sixty and certainly when you hit seventy you are no longer “middle aged.” You are probably right that there is a term I hadn’t thought of, “older” rather than “old.”

Roman legion units were not exempt from being called up for combat duty until they were sixty. And legion units in their fifties were not called up last. They were considered ready for duty.

And I’m not talking about lying behind an automatic rifle. I mean all hand-to-hand.

I don’t like to use “older” for myself because it sounds a bit subtle or pedantic. In your case it is not because you have a different image of how the word “old” applies to you. To you it means debilitated.

It may be my raising in the Deep South, but an old warrior or an old man is a title of respect to me.

“It ain’t the years, it’s the mileage.” I feel I have the miles and the experience that most men who live past a hundred will never have.

Anybody who counts on my being physically debilitated is in for a very rude shock.

I was at church a couple of years ago and a very friendly, gentle elderly man who was an usher, loved by all, brushed into me as we were squeezing out into the aisle. He was as hard as rock. I am a strong man, but I could feel that he, though he certainly intended no such thing, would have shoved me out of the way if he intended to. I don’t know what he did for a living all those years, but it was something heavy.

When I say “old” I mean something different from your image of the word.

Men who respect their commander often refer to him as “the old man,” though he is seldom as old as sixty and may not have reached middle age. That is the sense in which I like to use it here.