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Groucho Marx quipped, "A man is only as old as the woman he feels." I suspect this is why my older brother married a woman 16 years his junior. I still haven't made up my mind on whether I should admire or resent him for that. There are simply days when I would like to feel a bit younger.

I thought about this matter a week ago while getting a haircut. I have an unspoken agreement with the stylist who cuts my hair: the day my hair thins out enough to consider a comb-over, she'll shave my head bald to spare me the embarrassment.

It was there that I also learned that I'd missed another benchmark of growing old: the eyebrow trim. Seriously, at 45 years of age, I got an eyebrow trim. I didn't ask for it, didn't consider it, but I guess I needed it. And suddenly I felt my old rocking chair call to me like the morning's first cup of coffee.

As a younger man, I recall seeing the "old guys" who desperately needed eyebrow trims. I thought of myself having the wit of Groucho Marx as my years advanced but certainly not his bushy eyebrows. I'd come to accept that running 20 miles a week no longer kept my waistline in check, but having hair growth move from my scalp to destinations it had never been before was not on my bucket-list.

It's not just the hair migration that serves as a yardstick of aging, but also visits to the doctor. A 50-year-old coworker of mine tells the story of going to the doctor for a terrible head cold. The doctor insisted on a blood work-up, and he conceded. But when the doctor also recommended a colonoscopy, the line was drawn. Apparently when you get to a certain age, a head cold also means a butt cold in the medical community. Doctors give out colonoscopies to 50-year-olds the way drive-through bank tellers distribute candy to children.

Even the unassuming checkout stands of the local grocery are subject to the laws of aging. My brother Jeff went to the store to buy a few groceries for his family. Nothing much, just enough to keep within the Express Lane limit. After the young man at the register rang him up, he gave my brother the total amount due and then added, "And I applied your senior discount, sir." Jeff was about to protest when he suddenly caught himself and asked, "How much is that discount, son?" Upon learning the amount, he kept his protest to himself. "Five bucks is five bucks," he concluded. It would seem that, the older we get, the more we do become our fathers.

Similarly, a lifelong friend of the family tells the story of his amusement in getting an AARP application in the mail the week before he turned 50. His wife gave him a good ribbing for that. But she found it far less amusing when she received her application in the mail when she turned 40. He enjoyed a good laugh over it until she gave him that "look." Women, it seems, don't acknowledge their age, and we men make it a point to never act ours.

My brother Mike, who turned 50 last year, is clearly doing his best to stay young in appearance. He claims his success is attributed to exercise, weight lifting and eating loads of fiber. He went into great detail about his regimental diet of oat bran, flax seed, omega-3 fatty acids, yogurt and bacterial cultures, and the resulting low cholesterol. It's quite possible he's going to live to be 100… but, under those circumstances, who would really want to?

And on that note, I'm going out to the backyard for a cigar. There are those like my brother Mike who would certainly frown on such behavior, but I'm a believer that it's the life in your years that count, not the reverse. And though I seem destined to wind up with the eyebrows of Groucho Marx, I'm thinking that I just may live as long - but more importantly as full a life - as George Burns.

- Doug Clough

Doug Clough writes a column for the Ida County Courier in Ida Grove, Iowa, called "From our backyard…" His work has appeared in Farm News, The Iowan and Boating World, and he served as a travel scout for Midwest Living. "I am a father of a salad bowl family (aka 'blended'), a customer service manager, the possession of my Labradoodle and - in a former life - an English teacher. Someone has to enjoy that mix; it may as well be me," he says.