As well seasoned seniors we’ve said it all and heard it all before, you know how it goes, “I’ll never drink again,” or “When I was a boy/girl,” or the dream, “I coulda, shoulda, woulda,” or some of those well-known last words, “What does this button do?”, “If I only knew”, or “Nice doggie!”, and the most famous non-word -- "Oops." Words are the gatekeepers to the brain and the keys that unlock inspiration and stupidity. “It’s a dud! It's a dud! It's a du...”.

Then there are those little words of wisdom or warning, usually on small signs behind bars throughout the land that are made by the famous common persons who have experienced all of life. “Men are like coolers, load them with beer and you can take them anywhere.” Or, “Beer has been helping ugly people have sex since 1862.” Or, “If you drink to forget, pay in advance.”

“Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions,” said Bertrand Russell. Now, Bertrand may have meant the normal human animal, but he couldn’t have meant seniors who never run out of judgments and attitudes. “Trust me.”

So many people through the ages have been on top of this wisdom problem. “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom,” said the famous linguist H. L. Mencken, probably just before he was lost under a pile of un-fan mail. We know better. Mahatma Gandhi put it a different way. “We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”

Step by step all seniors discover all the positives and negatives of an eventful life, that journey we take. The positives we enjoy and put in our memory banks with a smile attached and a warm feeling. The negatives are placed in that same memory bank with a snarl and a flashing red warning light attached. That warning light is attached to words of wisdom that remind us to remind others that that is a no no.

Sometimes those words of wisdom, or more commonly known as ‘famous last words’, are left to the last day, and should be heeded as well as considered by the source and the time. “I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis,” said Humphrey Bogart the actor, who didn’t leave us with much new wisdom but never lost his character. “Go on, get out - last words are for fools who haven't said enough,” said Karl Marx, still in character. And, “Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something,” Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH”

“I never get lost.”

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