It occurred to me this last week when I volunteered once again to . . .

By nature I'm a hard worker and whenever I have a problem, I dig in and stand deep in my determination. I can figure anything out and I can handle anything that comes my way.

Go ahead! Bring it on! I'm tough! I can take it!

Good God! I'm exhausted just reading what I've written.

Believe it or not that's the way that I used to look at things that came my way. When someone, anyone, had something unpleasant to do, they would come to me. I took pride in the fact that I could handle any situation or problem.

But lately I've had a change of heart, or possibly I've just come to my senses? I don't jump at the chance to be the hero anymore. I've decided that I'm tired of being the tough one. I don't want to be the person who can handle everything. And I don't know why, to this day, I used to volunteer for all the tough assignments.

Yuh know, when I first started noticing that I wasn't volunteering anymore, it bothered me--a lot! Why wasn't I stepping up to the plate? Was this part of old age coming on? Maybe this is one of the first signs of aging--everything goes downhill after this?

I haven't quite figured out why I'm being selective about taking on the tough situations anymore, no more than I knew why I did take them on in the first place. My theory at the present time is that maybe my new behavior "is" a sign of getting older, but then again perhaps it doesn't have anything to do with giving in to age. Maybe it's true, you do get wiser with age and I just held out longer than most other people did.