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The Old Boys Book Club

Bob Moses

    “What is your ten-year plan?”
    Propelled by some misdirected inner pool cue trying to launch the eight ball out of the side of my mouth, these words slipped away over my tongue. The cue tip had already connected with the eight ball when they registered on my brain, triggering my inner “Whoa!” Too late. Horse, out of the barn.
    “Great idea,” Larry, our leader, enthused after soliciting a topic for our next book club gathering—a welcome respite from yet another painfully long, four-hundred-page bestseller. “Let’s do it,” he said.
    What the hell was I thinking, thought I, as the eight ball plopped into my lap.
    “I was just making a ...” joke is what I started to say but was interrupted by my usually good friend Bill, who chimed in his approval and added, “Let’s have Bob lead the discussion.”
    “Nurts!” was the expression that came to mind, an expletive my dad used once when hammering his thumb instead of the nail, and on similar occasions.
    Attending the meeting were eight age sixty-five-plus men, members of a group I call The Old Boys Book Club, of which I am a recent joiner. We meet monthly. The books we have read stand side by side in my living room bookcase. They include Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Williams, and The Soul of America by John Meacham. “Wow! I may be old, but I’m still smart,” they seem to shout.
    We meet in the glassed-in lounge area of a private tennis club in a rooted Denver community with the city’s tallest and oldest trees. I am the third owner of a house built in 1927 in a neighborhood nearby. I grew up with a tennis racquet in hand, and my attention occasionally drifts from the tales and tribulations of my fellow book clubbers to the panoramic window overlooking Court 1, where a little white tennis ball zips back and forth across the net. I think to myself: “I should be out there. How the hell did I end up in here?”
    The funny part about our book club is that we spend so little time talking about the books. Our gatherings last two and a half hours. Twenty minutes spent on the month’s selection is a long discussion. Mostly, we talk about ourselves. Our lives. Our loves. A recent adventure. Our challenges and worries. Our successes, which seem to be fewer as we grow older. Our ailments, on the opposite track. All grist for the mill.
    I recently lamented our scant attention to the monthly read. I intended it as an affable admonition. Now it is just a matter-of-fact observation. The tales we old boys tell one another are more relatable and compelling than the future of the planet or the digital revolution. We are more interested in our souls than the soul of the nation.
    In context, the thought of a ten-year plan lends itself to a reflective chuckle. Our average age is seventy-three. Yes, our days may be numbered, but the end is not in sight. Will we even be here ten years hence? Will we outlive COVID-19? Do we want to stick around if the end times arrive before we have taken our final bow?
    “What is your ten-year plan?” I served this query onto the table before us, littered with beer cans, an empty bottle of wine, and a variety of nibbles—not to mention five-hundred-plus years of living and a profusion of plans amongst us, with so many gone awry. When we meet again, and the ball is lobbed back into my court, this is what I plan to say:
    “I don’t want a plan for the rest of my life. I am the rest of my life!”
    I have survived varied experiences of intentional self-improvement, scattered over decades. I did the EST training in the 1970s. In the 1990s, I attended a four-day seminar led by “Iron John” poet Robert Bly. I have groaning shelves of self-help books: Think and Grow Rich; I’m Okay, You’re Okay; The Road Less Traveled; and, a perennial favorite, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
    The assumption underlying the me-culture suggests that we are not good enough; we must get better, smarter, thinner, wealthier, woke, whatever. It’s hard to feel good while telling yourself you’re not good enough—which, of course, makes you feel worse. Worse yet at our age when there is so little time left! What if we don’t get from here to over there?
    Today is the first day of the rest of your life. A timeworn maxim, but true nonetheless—true as hell. True, as ’tis said, as the sky is blue. As I write, I am sitting in my sunroom. Plants of long acquaintance abound around me. The sun peeks through melting clouds, hastening away shadows and portending better things.
    Tomorrow afternoon, when my book brethren gather to talk about our ten-year plans, I will remind them of Robert Burns’ counsel in his poem “To a Mouse,” penned in 1786.
    The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men
    Go oft awry,
    And leave us only grief and pain,
    For promised joy!
    Tick tock. Tick tock. So goes the kitchen clock. Who can cuff the iron hand of time? What ere the future herald or forebode, it shall come what may.
    We have today.
    If plan you must, plan for this day.
    Is there something you do well? Do it today!
    Is there something you want to do better? Yes! Do it today!
    Is there something you want to do for another? Go! Do not delay!
    Would you prefer just to go out and play? Yes, by all means—Go! Play!
    What more can I say?
    Here is a plan
    To stay in your prime,
    Live your life
    One day at a time

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