Judy and I were standing in line in the cafeteria at Delta State University when a friend of ours walked past.
He had played quarterback for the Statesmen, and he looked like he could still play. He had been coaching in his home state of Florida, and he, too, was enrolled in graduate school.
We talked with him for a few minutes, then an attractive young lady walked past. She caught his eye. He was single and Judy informed me that he was very handsome. "Excuse me," he said. "I’m going to talk with that young lady." Judy and I moved closer. We wanted to hear what he was going to say to this young lady.
He moved closer and said something that we could not hear. She turned around and said, "Sir?" Now he was all of 24 years old and she must have been in her late teens or early 20s. Anyway, he slithered back to where we stood and said with a look of disbelief on his face, "She thinks I’m an old man."
We were having a district meeting, and it was lunch time. I was seated with several of my colleagues and one young lady that I had only recently met. She must have been in her early 20s because she had only recently graduated from college. I was 39 years old, and there was not a gray hair on my head.
Somehow, the subject of age came up, and after a while she turned to me and asked, "How old are you?" I replied, "How old do you think I am?" She replied with a very sincere look on her face, "You are probably older, but you look 50." Well, this destroyed the rest of my deflated ego.
My brother-in-law was a homicide detective for the Memphis Police Department for many years. He said the major problem that he had when interviewing witnesses to a crime was getting a true description of the culprit. When he would ask a young witness how old the criminal was, he or she may say, "Well, he was old." "Well, how old is that? Can you put a number on it for me?" he would ask. "Oh, he must have been 22 or 23 at least, maybe older," the young witness would reply.
We see the world through a different set of eyes. Young people see the world in relation to their age, and anything older than they are seems old even though it may not be much older than they are. When a person grows older, everyone seems young. That is the way nature designed it, and nature’s design serves an important purpose. Young people provide the next generation so they are attracted to people relatively the same age. Older people, people who have lived in the world for a while, are supposed to provide the wisdom to the next generation. When we cross the lines, bad things happen.
Take the bully and sexual deviant Harvey Weinstein, for example. Here we have a 64-year-old man who has been sexually harassing women for over 30 years. Harvey was a powerful movie producer. When a young actress came to him looking for a job, he took advantage of his position and power. He was able to hide his sins for over 30 years, but recently, the sky has fallen. He was a "big fish" Democrat giving wads of money to the Democrat Party and to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Everyone in Hollywood knew what Harvey was. He was a predator that no one wanted to "out."
Can you imagine the panic when a 20 year old actress interviewed for a job and he came out clad in only a bath robe? This creep used his power as a movie mogul to take advantage of young women. Ashley Judd encountered this pervert. Judd has had a tough life, one that no young person should endure. She was molested by one of her mother’s boyfriends, and an older man in her community molested her. This is unfortunate and so unnecessary.
My dad gave me some good advice that has stuck with me over the years. "Always show respect to women," he said. This is a simple yet profound rule. Violate this rule, and you may end up like Harvey Weinstein, and this is a place you do not want to be.
