Sunday, Dec. 11, 2005 | 7:28 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun. His column appears on Sunday and on occasion during the week.
Happy birthday to me.
This is a most unusual move, recognizing my own birthday. For a couple of reasons. First, my friends will forever remember that today is my natal day and send me gifts -- really expensive ones, I hope -- for the rest of my life.
While I would love the thoughtfulness, writing all those thank-you notes would be almost unbearable.
And secondly, and more seriously, it will now mark indelibly on my own brain the light speed at which we seem to move through our lives once a certain age is reached.
I had breakfast Friday with a childhood friend of mine. Joel wished me happy birthday and in the same breath questioned where all that time had gone since we were kids playing ball in the street -- there weren't any ballparks nearby and there weren't any cars to get in the way of our baserunning in those days.
I couldn't answer him because the past five or six decades have blurred by so fast heading into a future of such wondrous opportunities that I haven't had time to pay attention to the past. Other than to try to learn its lessons.
Friday afternoon was spent doing what has come to be one of the highlights of my year -- the Greenspun companies' Christmas and Holiday party. Just in case you didn't notice I used both descriptions of the festivities lest some wacko radio mutt think that this "liberal" Republican was trying to destroy Christmas. I am actually a conservative Republican, maybe the only one left, but that is an argument for another day and another time -- a time when I am in a less festive mood.
It was when I looked out at the faces of more than 800 people who are now working for one of our companies -- and the number is growing at warp speed -- that I realized that the time we have, the friends we have and the relationships we have are not something we can and should take for granted.
What started out as the Las Vegas Sun Christmas party in the early 1950s has grown tenfold to encompass so many different and varied businesses that even my father probably could not have envisioned such growth. But he would be very pleased.
What hit home -- besides the number of wonderful people with whom I have had the privilege of working with for 40 years or just four years -- is that getting older can be fun. For in so many of the younger faces I saw myself, my wife, my brother and so many others of my generation, only they weren't.
But they do represent an entirely new generation of people whose hopes and dreams are very similar to what mine were so many years ago.
They want to have good, steady jobs, healthy families, a little money in their pockets and a lot more in the bank in case of an emergency. In short, they want what most people want.
What is fun about being my age and looking back at all those years that have flown by is that I understand that this next generation can have all of what they dream about. It isn't that hard.
For certain, my family can be helpful in making some of those dreams come true but, for the most part, those younger folks will have much more to say about their futures than I.
Looking forward should always be done with hope and promise -- along with some responsible measure of trepidation. Looking back should always be done with some measure of pride in what has been accomplished and an even greater measure of satisfaction that what we have learned, what we have lived through and what we now know not to fear can be used to guide those whose birthdays are still marked at the lower end of the scale.
Maybe it is just the season, but I stood in front of all of the people who help make my life and my family's life -- and their own lives too -- so much more enjoyable and I realized how lucky I am.
Perhaps it is because we all have something productive, meaningful and responsible to do. We don't tear other people apart, we don't destroy those who seek to provide public service, we don't take advantage of people who need help and not harmful intent, and we don't accept yesterday's way of doing things just because we are afraid of change.
I also looked out at my mother, Barbara Greenspun, who was so pleased to be there and, at the same time, somewhat bewildered at the sheer number of people for whom she now must feel personally responsible, and I saw in her a sense of fulfillment that she and my father had done their jobs well. And that made me happy, too.
When I have been asked in the past what I have wanted for my birthday I have always responded, "Nothing, I have everything I could ever want." I always thought that was the right thing, the humble thing and the responsible thing to say. I now know for sure that I was right.
If I have a birthday wish for myself, it is that others in our community can say the same thing when they reach my age. And, of course, that I can say the same thing when I reach senior status.
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