Where is my flying car? I was promised flying cars!

I don't see any flying cars! 

I'm 40 years old today.  Age is just a number, nothing important as I've been an 'old man' much of my life.  But 40.  Forty.  Four-Zero.  That's 14610 days, if I include leap years (and I have, because that's how I roll.  Nerd to your mother.)  

One of my favorite websites, IMDB, lists over 4000 people born the same year as me, actors and best boys and key grips born 40 years ago.  Many famous, some that nobody's ever heard of.  And I share my birthday with the likes of Salvador Dali and Irving Berlin.  They're no slouches.  

1971 was a big year in the space race, astronauts and cosmonauts vying for supremacy of the heavens.  I wasn't yet born when Americans walked on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission.  I was alive and being adorable when we followed up with Apollo 15, but I don't really remember it.  I was alive when DB Cooper jumped from a Northwest Orient flight and into history.

We were doing that in 1971, and now?  Nothing.  Sure, there's a space station up there somewhere, waiting patiently to Skylab its way back to Earth, but are we really using it for anything?  Science is all up in our faces over alternative fuels and clean energy, but where's my robot maid, my dog-walking treadmill?  Do I need to download an iPhone app?  I don't even have an iPhone.    

As for my physical prowess, I'm not going to win a Superbowl or the Tour de France.  Can you imagine?  Especially those of you who've seen me throw a football or witnessed my first bike ride without training wheels.  Anyone who actually witnessed my face-first assault on the school track back in 8th grade isn't at all surprised that I've never become a superstar athlete. 

So, what have I been doing with myself?  I'm married to a beautiful woman who puts up with far too much of my nerdilated insanity.  Not that I'm asking her to stop.  I have two wonderful daughters and a lovely grandson.  I learned how to ride a motorcycle, and for anyone who was there for my early forays into the bicycle realm, that's probably pretty frightening.

In all, I've managed a pretty positive forty years by most standards.  And the future seems pretty bright.  If only I had a flying car where I could keep my shades.  Then again, I'm fairly old-school.  My razor only has two blades.  Most of my music is still on cassette, many of them taped off of the radio, and my first portable cassette recorder (like a Walkman without the name brand) required me to flip the tape over to the B-side manually.  I did walk home from school in the snow.  I've only owned a cell phone for a quarter of my life.

But being old school means I was taught that when you make a promise, you keep it.  And I was promised flying cars, so I want mine.