• You and your teeth don't sleep together.
• Your try to straighten out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren't wearing any.
• At the breakfast table you hear snap, crackle, pop and you're not eating cereal.
• Your back goes out, but you stay home.
• When you wake up looking like your driver's license picture.
• It takes two tries to get up from the couch.
• When your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio.
• When happy hour is a nap.
• When you're on vacation, and your ENERGY runs out before your money does.
• When you say something to your kids that your mother said to you, and you always hated it.
• When all you want for your birthday is to not be reminded of your age.
• When you step off a curb and look down one more time to make sure the street is still there.
• Your idea of weight lifting is standing up.
• It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired.
• Your memory is shorter and your complaining lasts longer.
• Your address book has mostly names that start with Dr.
• You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going.
• The pharmacist has become your new best friend.
• Getting "lucky" means you found your car in the parking lot.
• The twinkle in your eye is merely a reflection from the sun on your bifocals.
• It takes twice as long - to look half as good.
• Everything hurts, and what doesn't hurt - doesn't work.
• You look for your glasses for half an hour, and they were on your head the whole time.
• You sink your teeth into a steak - and they stay there.
• You give up all your bad habits and still don't feel good.
• You have more patience, but it is actually that you just don't care anymore.
• You finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.
• You wonder how you could be over the hill when you don't even remember being on top of it.

At the head of the table was a large pile of apples. The nun made a note, "Take only one, God is watching."

Moving through the line, to the other end of the table, was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies. A boy wrote a note, "Take all you want, God is watching the apples."

. . .and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, "Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?" 

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, "Of course you may!" and she gave me a giant squeeze. "Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?" I asked.

She jokingly replied, "I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, have a couple of children, and then retire and travel."

"No seriously," I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

"I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!" she told me.

After class we walked to the student union building and shared chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this "time machine" as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.

She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, "I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know."

As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, "We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing.

If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding the opportunity in change.

Have no regrets. The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets."

She concluded her speech by courageously singing "The Rose." She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives. 

At the years end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago.

One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.