What it means to be 80 | Junius Williams

I am officially now an octogenarian, although I have quietly claimed 80 for the last few months. However, not so quietly when I try to get a psychological advantage (mostly unsuccessfully) over my youngest son, Ché, who is 25, when we play “Last Tag.” I’ll explain in a minute.

When my oldest son, Junius, came up to wish me an “official happy birthday,” I told him “Thanks.”

Then, he noticed that I was writing about it. “I see,” he said, “writing about being old?”

I told him, defiantly, “Yes!”

Ché added, “I see you’re giving out unsolicited comments beginning at age 80 — like you did for the first 79 years of your life.”

So, you see what I go through?

And that’s who I am. I’m surrounded by youthful energy, from my wife, Antoinette, my two sons, and two daughters, Camille and Junea, and my grandsons, Justice and Josiah. Add to that my friends in the organizations I founded at Rutgers University-Newark, the Abbott Leadership Institute and the Youth Media Symposium, as well as the young people featured on my podcast, “Everything’s Political.”

My wife said I am able to “dance between the generations,” and she is so correct! The key to being my kind of 80 is not to get stuck with a group of old people who inevitably (me included) start talking about what ails us and who just died. I enjoy my life, being young with the youngsters.

Sometimes, I try a bit too hard. “Last Tag” is a game Ché and I play that brings out all my competitive spirit, tests my skill and reflexes and gives me very powerful Zen awareness when I win, so I can trash talk him for letting his old Daddy beat him.

The object is to tag each other last before we leave the house or first when we arrive at the house. Consecutive in-and-outs means multiple last-tag opportunities. Like all children’s games, it has rules: you can’t tag on the steps; or when you’re fresh out of the shower. And there are a few other rules I try to make up as we go along.

He is younger, quicker and stronger, so I depend on stealth and strategy. He gets more tags but I tell him it’s not how many times I win but the fact that I win that gives me satisfaction. He won’t accept my concept of winning; tells me I should surrender but I say “Never!” And so, we progress.

Sometimes, I fall down and he has to help me up. My acupuncturist tells me I should stop playing this game, but I say “Never!” Why should I give up when I have never let the stronger nimbler opponent keep me down?

You see “winning” at my age is different. Every time I pull off a successful ambush, I compare it with the time I took a busload of my Newark Area Planning Association folks, Black Panthers and white ministers to Trenton, and strongly suggested that the state Highway Administration cancel Route 75, a planned eight-lane highway, through Black Newark. They took our advice.

Every time I block his fast, heavy hands from attacking me, I have just as much right to loudly proclaim last tag as he does, just like when I hollered back at a congressman who tried to sully my name. I won because I refused to let him have the factual high ground. And when you counter a sitting congressman with facts, using the news medium he thought he controlled, you win!

So, I’m sure you’re saying, get to the point, Junius. How do you compare yourself now, with the person you used to know?

Well, “Last Tag” is my story. It’s the how and why I keep going. But it’s also about family and friends who keep loving me and the me who loves them back.

Recently a few dozen people came together on Zoom to celebrate my 80 years. All kinds of people from all over the country, orchestrated so well by Antoinette and my friend Juan Thomas from Chicago. About 20 people told stories about me, some real, some imagined.

But that’s the beauty of a story, isn’t it? What amazed me wasn’t the stories — many of which I had forgotten — or the storytellers, who I knew from way back in my high school days, to my family, to my present day. Instead, it was that most of the people stayed and listened for almost two hours. That’s love, and I so appreciate and love them back.

And that’s new because I wouldn’t have been able to say that before! Thank you, God, for letting me see this day!

More columns from Junius Williams on Mosaic:

How I learned to love my Blackness | Junius Williams

I still have an unfinished agenda | Junius Williams

Junius Williams, Esq. is the official historian of Newark. He is the host of the Podcast “Everything’s Political”, and author of the book “Unfinished Agenda, Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power”

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