Just bought tickets for Patty and me to see the new movie, "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29," at the Kimball Theater. The movie is about one of the most famous college football games ever played, when Yale had the longest winning streak in college football. The game was played in 1968, and the movie features interviews of the players, 40 years later. The movie has gotten great reviews. But the reason I want to see it is because St. Stephen member George Bass was the starting right offensive tackle for Yale! (As George says, "Number 78 in your program and #1 in your hearts.")

So I went to the Kimball box office. The good news is that, following Patty's and my most recent birthdays, we qualify for the senior citizen discount! So, instead of the tickets costing $7 each, they were only $5. The bad news? The woman in the ticket booth asked me about the discount.

So, I look my age. Sigh ...

(I stopped to buy the tickets near the end of a 28-mile bike ride. So at least I wasn't acting my age.)

Why is there such a thing as a senior citizen discount? I think it orginated in the era when seniors (then considered to be 65 and older) had to watch their pennies because their income was so much less than during their working years. Many survived on Social Security alone. Obviously, that doesn't describe my situation. So I'm thinking: I should keep track of the two dollars here and there that I save during a year and give that amount away to the United Way office that does its best to meet emergency needs for the poor.

New subject.

This morning the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran Garrison Keillor's wonderful tribute column to John Updike. I got a kick out of this sentence Keillor wrote of Updike: "He was the great American man of letters of the second half of the 20th century, critic, poet, novelist, master of the short story, and a man of Lutheran virtues, cheerful, hardworking, self-deprecating, ever grateful for oportunity."

"Lutheran virtues," huh? It's a pretty good compliment!