I never felt like an "Old Timer" until Saturday, Feb. 11, on the morning before the "Great Snowstorm of the Winter of 2006." A group of former Hicksville-American Soccer Coaches were meeting for their monthly breakfast at the Empire Diner. There were eight of us.

I innocently posed the question, "How many of you guys and gals remember the famous 'Blizzard of 1947'?" Almost everyone at the table looked up from their coffee and eggs and said, "Yes, I remember 1947." I was dumbfounded.

I did the not-so-quick arithmetic in my elderly brain and came to the conclusion it was 59 years ago. Wow! Almost six decades ago when I was 13 years old, 24 inches of snow fell on the Bronx of my youth. I lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Bryant Avenue with my parents and my younger sister. Even the huge snowfall could not curtail my youthful energies and my need to play the "city game," basketball.

Somehow, my friend Herby Yager and I got a hold of two shovels and we went to the playground on the corner of Bryant Avenue and 176th Street. We cleaned off the court and shot baskets until neither of us could move. Sweating in the snow is a practice for the young, not for "Old Timers."

Nowadays if I pick up a shovel and want to clear my walkway and driveway, I am accused by my lovely wife, Lorraine, of trying to kill myself. She reads me the riot act and quotes the statistics of how many "Old Timers" died while shoveling snow. Usually, I capitulate while still yearning to grab a shovel.

Can 59 years make such a difference in the way we perceive ourselves? I guess the answer is "yes." Running through the crowded streets of New York as a teenager is a far cry from the venerable suburban, taxpaying homeowner of today, 2006.

It was gratifying to hear some of the people at the breakfast table talk of 1947 and the snowstorm. Mother Nature, lately, has been giving us many things to remember. The Tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Hurricane Katrina and sudden earthquakes all over the globe, are just a few.

They are a part of us, even 59 years later, but they are surely no fun while still struggling through them to survive.