Olivia Newton-John Is 65

I tend to treat the young people I come across these days with a mixture of pity and envy: pity, because having once been their age I know all too well the heartbreak and anguish and pervasive sense of crippling disappointment that they are due to discover as they make their own journeys through life and learn the horrible lesson that the whole thing is one big con designed to keep you going and once you realize that it is all disappointment and despair you are too tired to do anything about it but wallow in your misery and try to convince yourself that at least it can’t get any worse even though all the experiences you’ve encountered up to the present are incontestable proof that not only can it, it almost certainly will. The envy part comes in knowing that they are probably too young to remember this song, which was well nigh inescapable back in 1981. I think there was even a network television special promoting the album, but I am not going to Google that because I cannot bear to go down a rabbit hole to a time when I was still young enough to believe that the future was full of the sweetness and love in which I was at that age immersed. Anyway, it’s Olivia Newton-John’s birthday today. You probably know her from Grease.