Advice from a Wise Man on Getting Older

* Accept gracefully what you cannot change. As you age, you will steadily gain wisdom. Unfortunately, it goes right to your prostate gland. This explains why, as a young man, your prostate is the size of a walnut, but as you get older it is the size of a Wal-Mart. The good news is that there are drugs to at least partially control this. The bad news is that these drugs have side effects that can include -- this is the truth; I am reading it right from the package insert -- "breast enlargement."

* For the rest of your life, you will remain locked into whatever music you currently listen to. Trust me, it happens to everyone. It happened to me. Given the quality of popular music of the 1960s, I am fine. Given the quality of popular music of the 2000s, you are toast. Suggestion: Get a job as a jackhammer operator, wear no ear protection, go deaf. At least your taste in music won't make you a source of contemptuous merriment to your children, the way my parents were to me.

* Cleanse your language of certain callow affectations common to your generation, for they will not serve you well later in life. I, for example, employed the word "groovy" well into my twenties, until I once used it as a panelist on a TV political talk show, while discussing the sociopolitical ramifications of a gubernatorial veto. The studio audience actually laughed. In your case, when being interviewed about your nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, you do not want to say, "I was, like, 'No way,' and the president goes, 'For realz, yo,' and . . ."

* The index of male physical pleasure can be plotted by two lines on a chart. One of these lines, which begins very high in one's younger years, represents the pleasures of the bedroom. The other, which begins quite low, represents the pleasures of the bathroom. I am assured by men older than I that these lines eventually intersect. I do not want to presume to tell you how to prepare for this moment, but I will share my plan, if it will be of help. When those two lines intersect, I will commit hari-kari. I will aim for my stomach, but will probably hit my prostate.

* Practice preemptive temperance. You know how you can get completely wasted one night, and the next morning you're okay? Well, one day, that won't be true anymore. And I mean "one day." This change will occur, literally, overnight, and you will discover it too late, as I did, when I arrived for work unshaven, with mismatched shoes, on a Saturday.

(Thanks, Rich!)