It wasn’t much of a snow — not for someone who grew up in the North Coast snow belt. Oh, sure, a swirling wind had drivers guessing whether they were still on the road — mundane stuff for northeast Ohio kids.

I know that 16-year-old Burton would have been behind the wheel, adrenaline pumping, thrilling to the slip-sliding challenge. But 66-year-old Burton… I stayed home.

What a difference 50 years can make.

When I turned Sweet 16 a half century ago, a gorgeous upperclassman named Laura kissed me on the cheek in the high school band room. That kiss had me flying high the rest of the day.

When I turned Sweet 66 a few months ago, I took a nap. That nap had me smiling until bedtime.

Sixteen-year-old me would have considered a nap boring. Sixteen-year-old me would have considered staying home when the snow flies as chicken-livered, scaredy-cat, shameful behavior. Old fogey stuff.

Sixty-six-year-old me, a card-carrying old fogey, wonders why he used to fight so hard against staying home and taking naps. At 66, I’m a lot wiser.

That might be about the only thing to say about 66. Otherwise, one’s 66th birthday is kind of — how do I put this — meh.

I don’t remember it, but the first birthday was significant. It was the first time that grownups let me anywhere near fire — the single candle on a cake with gobs of frosting that I’d smear all over my face and hair.

The 10th birthday — double digits — is especially useful if you know someone who gives you birthday cards stuffed with a dollar for every year of your life. Back then, comic books and balsa wood airplanes cost 10 cents, so 10 bucks was a fortune!

At 12, you call yourself a pre-teen. And then 13 rolls around, and ta-dah, you’re a teenager.

The grownups were always grousing about the trouble teenagers caused. I couldn’t wait to have that kind of fun myself.

Sweet 16 is for kisses, and by 16, kisses don’t seem nearly as yucky as they did on your third or fourth birthdays.

At 18, I became a bona fide adult. I could vote and help decide the fate of the entire nation because I was a GROWNUP.

Twenty-one meant I could drink whatever beverages I chose. This one didn’t do much for me because I still chose Coca-Cola.

Twenty-five meant I had earned a quarter century of respect, and 30 suddenly didn’t seem as old as I thought it was.

At 35, I finally was old enough to be elected president of the United States. Fortunately, I escaped any hints that a single person wanted to nominate me for that headache.

Then life “began” at 40. By “life,” I mean the increasing desire to go home and take a nap.

That half-century mark at 50 started to sound scary, and at 60, I calculated that I’d spent more than twice as many years out of school than I did riding buses, sweating over homework and falling flat on my face in gym class.

Sixty-five, the Medicare birthday, was a celebration. My medical insurance rates plummeted, AND restaurants insisted that I take senior discounts. Retirement and more time for naps waited just around the corner.

But nothing in particular happened when I turned 66.

Sixty-six just kind of sat there, another day like all those other faceless dates on the calendar.

Except for one thing–now I am old enough to know to come in out of the snow! It’s nap time. I gotta rest up. Seventy is just down the road.

If you have an extinguisher standing by, light candles for Burt at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.