By Mickey Dunaway

Reprinted with Permission by Currents Magazine | AUG 2025 | Cornelius, NC

With the hardware in my body, sometimes, I feel like Steve Austin. You remember him—the Six Million Dollar Man— today when the rain is pouring in buckets off my aluminum patio cover, the hardware in my knees and back, and remind me in no uncertain terms that I am getting older. And it causes me to ponder the question: Am I getting older or getting old? 

I have concluded that getting OLDER is a function of the number of days we have inhabited this planet. Getting OLD is a frame of mind. Let me give you an example.

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When Clint Eastwood was asked about his secret to continued success regardless of his age—which is now 94—he said.“My secret has been the same since 1959: staying busy. I never let the old man into the house. I’ve had to drag him out because he was already comfortably settled, bothering me all the time, leaving no space for anything other than nostalgia.” (Mar 20, 202$

As a professor, I started out with classes full of students. As the classes passed, sometimes—if a student desired it—we became colleagues seeking the same goals for students in their schools. And often, again if they desired it, I became a mentor to whom they could go. They knew I had been where they desired to be as a school leader. Most often, we would meet for coffee to discuss an issue they had back in their home school. Funny how conversations in coffee shops seem to free us up to talk.

. . . . .

Such was the case last weekend when I met for coffee with a former UNCC Master’s student from 2007 or thereabouts. We met at a coffeehouse midway between our homes, and we talked, and talked, and talked for hours over our large cafe-Americanos. We talked about our families, past classes together, our futures, and the issues we faced. Me about retirement, and she about a situation she was having at a school.

After we talked out our concerns and interests. Then we hugged goodbye (we do that in the South) and promised to have coffee again soon.

As I drove the ten minutes back home, I realized I still had all the lessons I had learned as a school principal 30 years ago and as a professor teaching and sharing those lessons to excited UNCC graduate students who aspired to take on the toughest job in public education. I was the same age when I left home, but I was, for these hours, my former self—principal, professor, and mentor.

And as I pulled into my driveway, I said, “Thank You,” to the Almighty for keeping me younger than my age and reminding me to not stop now!

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The greatest MLB pitcher of all time, Satchel Paige, summed it up nicely, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”