Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells had this to say whenever a coach talked about how his team has played much better than his losing record.

“You are what your record is.”

The same statement can be made about the age of a senior citizen. No matter how young you may look or how healthy you are, if you’re 70 years old, then you’re 70 years old.

Now I know there are valid arguments about what I just said. Sure, there could be a difference in someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes every day and that white-haired gentleman who rides the treadmill four times a week and drinks carrot juice in the morning. Health does matter, but vegetarians and workout seniors are not guaranteed more days on this earth than me.

I doubt that most of the human race will die off someday, leaving a small population of 100-year-old people with bodies and minds of those in their 50s. So, then, I’ll take my chances eating a good beef stew and getting my exercise by rolling a bowling ball down a lane for three games once a week.

Yet age is age, and when you cross north of 60, it can weigh upon you like an anchor. Andy Rooney said, “Everyone wants to live a long life, but nobody wants to get old.” Every time when I hear my retired bowling buddy complain another birthday has come and gone, I reply, “It’s better than the alternative.” If I open my eyes tomorrow morning and I see there’s no toe tag attached to my foot, it’s going to be a good day.

I saw this TV commercial that sells a bottle of pills to improve memory. Sometimes, I think aging brings along with it a constant cruelty to those of us who still remember those moments when we were forever young. I think of a baseball game I played over 50 years ago and I say, “It feels like yesterday that I hit the double off the wall in the All-Star game.” Memories can be downright painful, especially when I can remember kissing my girlfriend at a drive-in movie when I was in high school, but I can’t remember where I put my car keys an hour ago.

Life is full of irony. I do find a few benefits of flipping the calendar more times than I can count. Now I’m not a fan of cold weather, and the winter season can be a miserable time for us older folks, but there are some moments of brief accomplishment.

When I was a kid, I hated to shovel snow. As strong as I was and after a foot of a snowfall, I shoveled my front and back steps, my long driveway and the same for two of my elderly neighbors.

Believe it or not, now I look forward to pushing the shovel across my front deck and down to where my car is parked. It’s an event that gives me a “Rocky” moment. When I finish and if I’m not bent over trying to catch my breath, I feel like jumping in joy. With degenerative spinal disease and collapsed disks in my lower back, clearing 3 inches of snow off is an extraordinary feat.

Another benefit of aging is the list of foods that I like to eat is much longer than when I was a kid. Growing up, I was a picky eater. My mom made homemade tomato sauce for spaghetti and meatballs, but I had her butter my pasta. She took all morning rolling out the dough and making noodles for chicken soup, but I only liked the ones that came out of the box. I was a big Popeye fan, so she tried to get me to eat the spinach that came out of a can, but I said no way, Jose.

I eat spinach now, the kind that comes out of the bag, and I love pasta sauce. In fact, broccoli and mushrooms that once had me retching at the supper table when I was much younger are regular visitors to my dinner plate these days.

But to be honest, the idea of living forever young is not a sensible approach when we reach a seventh decade. My destination down the road of mortality hits me in the face with a hard punch of reality. Each blessed day I appreciate as a gift and an opportunity to do something worthwhile.

Eighty-seven-year-old actress Sophia Loren said, “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

I’ll add a one more must-do to the fountain of youth she speaks of. Laugh. When you’re done laughing, then laugh some more. When I was a bucking bronco back in the ’60s and ’70s and I did something that I thought I was stupid and consequential, I became immediately angry at myself and I slung a slew of expletives across the room. The same kind of thing happens today, and instead of slinging the sordid language, I laugh at myself. This helps me accept the age that I am. I like to call to think I am “perfectly imperfect.”

As I turn out the light on another day, I feel my aches and pains. They will greet me again in the morning, but so will the morning sun that filters through my window, reminding me that I’ve been rewarded with another day to laugh, to love and to live.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.