Here I am sitting on the sofa with the notebook computer on my lap trying to peck away at composing this column. I have to tell you, it’s slow going. It’s slow going because, frankly, I’m tired. I mean, I’m just bone tired, worn down, frazzled. Whew! Excuse me a moment so I can catch my breath.

Okay, I’m back. I’m sorry. Did you ask why I’m tired? Sit down a moment and let me tell you.

I was born nine days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you do the math; don’t take too long; I’m tired. Okay, got the answer? Good, now I’ll continue.

I’m tired because no sooner had we entered the 21st Century than I had that magic birthday, ending in a zero. (You did the math; you know which one.) One would have thought that having reached this exalted status of life I’d settle into the pure enjoyment of all that transpires. Yeah, right!

The 21st Century began with half the world going nuts over the possibility of the Y2K bug. The whole world, seemingly, was fretting the computers would come crashing down and the whole financial system would collapse. Do you realize how much fret wears one down? But we got through that.

Eleven months after the Y2K disaster failed to be a disaster, we had an election. And even today we’re waiting to discover who really won. Oh, the Supreme Court, as our system provides, determined the winner, but, the tension, oh, the tension. Tension also depletes one’s energy.

On September 11, 2001, more than 2500 people died in New York and Washington, D. C.  In March, 2002, our troops invaded Afghanistan and one year later the bombs began to fall on Baghdad. I followed the reports on the news; but I also followed the war through the words of my internet friend in Baghdad, a young woman, known to the world as “Riverbend”, who wrote a blog that proclaimed: “... I’ll meet you ‘round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend.” The last contact with her was October 22, 2007. She’d made it to Syria, a refugee. I don’t know what happened to her after that. No one does.

There was more that wore me out in this past decade. The snipers started killing people in Washington, D. C., in the summer of 2002; the Roman Catholic Church was rocked by more charges of pedophilia; in August of 2005 Hurricane Katrina ruptured the dykes in New Orleans and there were images of bodies floating in the street; the hurricane spawned the largest American refugee crisis since the Civil War.

Barack Obama was elected on November 4, 2008 in the midst of the worst financial crisis this nation has seen since October of 1929. Obama’s honeymoon lasted about ten days. Six weeks before the election Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and the world’s economy was thrown into a tailspin.

If that was not enough I’ve had to endure that fellow in the Utah desert cutting his arm off with a pen knife in order to survive, Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s dramatic landing on of the Airbus on the Hudson River, MIchael Jackson’s drug overdose, Octomom, Jon and Kate, ant the Balloon Boy’s idiotic parents, to say nothing of the latest regarding Tiger Woods.

Do you see why I’m tired? Frankly, I’m ready to trade this decade in for a new one!