Crow: (n) a large black bird

There are two ways to get old:

1. You can get old gracefully, trying to stay current with as much of life that is worth your attention
2. Or you can get old being exasperated with all changes—minor or major—and end up looking like a crank.

There is one thing for sure:

No one talks about crows anymore.

Not since the movie, “The Crow,” which came out so long ago that a quizzical look from anyone under the age of thirty-five would be expected.

They don’t use scarecrows anymore to literally scare away crows from eating the corn seed.

You certainly know you’re over the hill if you’re referring to “crow’s feet” at the corners of your eyes. Wrinkles that rankle.

I guess they still call it a crowbar, though nowadays people expect their vehicles to be self-healing (and that includes their tires).

And they certainly aren’t pulling many nails out of boards with the old crowbar.

There is one phrase in reference to the crow that I always found endearing, and if it’s part of a bygone era, I might want to pause for a moment to drop a single tear, and that is:

As the crow flies.

Long before America was urban, people judged the miles between one place and another in two ways. One was if you were going by the roads, and the other was if you happened to be a bird and could fly from “this spot here” to “that spot over there.”

It was the way the old timers exporessed their complaints about modern roads, and wished they were birds, taking a more direct path, taking less time and mileage.

“As the crow flies, it’s five miles, but if you go on Route 73 it’ll be twelve.”

This was usually followed by some sort of farmer’s giggle.

But what makes it unfortunate that this phrase has disappeared, or at least lost some of its charm, is that we as people were meant to approach our doings—our problems, situations and activities— “as the crow flies.”

Rather than building difficult paths toward solutions or arguing for hours over the most righteous system, we should gain the eye of the crow, who looks straight to where it’s going and flies above the interference.

I would love to live life as the crow flies.

To do so, I need to ask my attitude to grant me some altitude.

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