I see my grandaddy tap-tapping on his old Royal typewriter a thousand years ago, when I was the littlest of girls. I didn't understand it then, but he was a younger man than I would ever realize. Most of my memories of him put him much older.

I didn't know this either, but he was contemporary, typing records of his insurance sales through carbon paper, duplicating them as originals and copies. He gave the third copy to the company, the second to the recipient, and filed, for himself, the first, while other agents pressed pen and ink on paper.

If he were still around today, he'd own Microsoft Office for Mac, iWork and Keynote, and he would create PowerPoint presentations to the company at hand. He'd be good with PhotoShop.

He would groove to the sounds of an iPod, tap his feet in perfect rhythm and sing out loud as if in a shower stall, never minding who might hear. He would own a BlackBerry.

He would wet his whistle with Gatorade and try some tasty tofu. He'd down a sushi or two and board a bus for another trip to Atlantic City or go see his great-granddaughter in "The Lion King" on Broadway.

He'd write another book, like he did when he was 94. And maybe this time he'd include my grandmother in his autobiography, and not just his second wife. And maybe he'd say more about how all four of his children earned advanced degrees, a goal he learned from his parents, whose education ended in primary school. At 50-something, he earned his associate degree.

He'd be asked to speak at colleges about his "secret" to longevity and his time riding the rails as a sleeping-car porter long before I was even a thought to my parents. And he'd dance the dance of life, which ended in 2001, when he was 97.

He, like my mother today, never looked back on the bad old days, but kept eyes focused on what lay ahead. He, like my mother, who was his in-law and who celebrates 83 years this month, ignored the hold of the CCW -- the cold, cruel world -- and went forth as if being alive, kind and gracious were all that mattered.

He was a tough old dude who was not angry with the world, although he had seen things that made him angry. But anger should be temporary, at best. From him I learned to put anger in my back pocket and do something constructive to improve the situation instead. Or move on. Just move on.

I look at the folks around me and understand what my mother has always said is true: Age is an attitude. I see 20-year-olds with the energy of slugs or who are imbued with life. I see 50-year-olds lifting weights, with abandon, or finding that hair loss makes life too difficult for mirrors. I see immobile 14-year-olds who have forgotten how to play or who skateboard with revolutionary fervor against all the rules. I see 70-year-olds whose joy is work, whose passion is volunteering, or whose idea of time is the proverbial rainy day.

I like rainy days. Most of them, anyway.

The world seems to have wrought they who move forward and they who stand still, and age is not the issue. For myself, I learn from the past, but I do not relish it. I appreciate what has gone before, but I do not yearn to turn back time.

What I do want to do is thank those who came before me for their tenacity and strength. And for the gifts they have given all of us.

If my granddad were still around, he would walk his neighborhood in Baltimore and continue to educate the young men on the streets on what it means to be a man, like he used to do. He would talk to them and listen to them, and he would encourage them to go back to school. And they would call him "sir."

E-mail Diane Brown at dmbrown@comcast.net.

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