Published: January 31, 2007 10:26 am      

VALVANO: Thrilled to hit the big 5-0

Here is a disclaimer.

I have to be careful how I write this or the meaning of the column will be the exact opposite of what I mean for it to be.

One of the great gifts my father gave me was the ability to enjoy life at whatever stage you were in. He never feared nor relished getting older. He simply went on to the next things, and embraced them, enjoyed them and treasured them.

He enjoyed being a competitive athlete in his 20’s. He equally loved being a recreational athlete in his 60’s.

He loved being a dad. He equally enjoyed being a granddad.

He enjoyed his job as a teacher and coach, and by and large a homebody. (He didn’t take his first flight until he was almost 50.)

Then he enjoyed retirement and visiting all over North America and Europe.

I bring this up because Monday I became 50 years of age. (My father never said “… years old. I noticed that as I got older and it seems appropriate for how he lived.)

So many of my well-meaning friends enjoyed giving me the needle that everyone gets at 50, the over-the-hill jokes, the global warming from the birthday cake, etc., etc. And they aren’t trying to really upset me … just have some fun.

But I feel like I am spoiling it because I can’t even work up a good-natured resentment about getting older. It just seems like there is so much good going on, who cares or keeps track about a number?

My roommate in college became 50 in September, and he went through the same things, especially the people who love to ask, “So how’s it feel to be 50?”

He said, “Really not a whole heckuva lot different than 49.”

Good answer. But I will modify it … in my case not a lot different than 39. Or 29. Only better.

On Monday, I played my very first ice hockey game, among a group of 35 other first-time players. I can’t remember my first experience at any sport being more fun.

We play again Monday … I am counting the days like a little kid. (Oh and by the way, I was not very good … but I am going to get better.)

In May, I will kick (or at least attempt to kick) an actual extra point in a real Arena League 2 Football game of the Louisville Fire. My “long snapper” will be former All-Pro NFL lineman Will Wolford.

I played three sports at the small college level, loved them all, but none of them were football.

Like many kids, my ultimate dream was to be a pro athlete.

At 50, for one game, one play perhaps, that will happen.

I will be in the AFL record book forever, playing with one of the game’s great lineman, and it is not some joke to me. I am treasuring this opportunity.

My beautiful wife of 26 years (who can still fit into her wedding dress, which amazes me) is the reason our marriage is still intact, and I am as crazy about her as an 18 year old.

I have asked her to marry me again. She accepted, and we are going to “get married” again within the year.

So, at 50, I just took up ice hockey, am going to make my pro football debut and am getting married to a beautiful girl I am wild about.

The “wrong” way to take this would be as a boast, and I pray you don’t. Because the point is, I am as “average” an American as you can imagine.

Two kids, pets, mortgage, bills, problems, diets … they are all there. But with the outlook from my father, I feel blessed to treasure all the opportunities that surround all of us all the time. You just have to get the antenna up to see them.

That, I learned from my brother Jim, who could find some humor, some reason to smile in any situation. It may sound hokey, but your outlook defines you.

I am not here to celebrate “me”. I am here to be presumptuous enough to remind you to celebrate “you”.

Get the antenna up, and look for dreams that you can make true for yourself and those around you. Sports sometimes have a limiting quality.

“You’re too old, too slow, too short, too something.”

You really aren’t too anything to make your own dreams reality.

As Nikos Kazantzakis said, “You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise and in you go.”

I used to recruit and be amazed that two kids on the same team, from the same school, same age, often living mere blocks from each other, could have such different outlooks.

One was ready to come to college, learn, grow, take on the world and embrace it all. The other seemed like the weight of all the world’s burdens were on his shoulders. No enthusiasm, no sense of hope, and clearly no “antenna.”

It seems like the only difference was their outlooks.

Tony Bennett, who has had an extraordinary life as a popular singer and painter, said that last year was by far the best year of his life.

He was 80.

Sorry to be so happy … I can’t help it. I’m 50. Thirty more years with the antenna up seems almost too good to imagine.

Just wanted to remind you they are up for you, too.

Bob Valvano is an ESPN radio host of The V Show with Bob Valvano. He also serves as analyst for University of Louisville basketball telecasts.