[Ads-l] "The older I get, the better I was."

[Jonathan Lighter]

I encountered this self-deprecatory proverb long ago, maybe on a T shirt
in the '90s.

To judge from Google Books and  Internet Archive, that's about the time it
had become relatively current.

The oldest example - by far - seems to be from the Archive:

1958 Bruce F. Towne _Bricks on the Chimney: Facts and Foibles of Jamaica,
Iowa_ ([Jamaica, Ia.:], pvtly. ptd.,  1958) unp.: Present day heroes seem
unreplacable [sic] but next year always seems to find stalwarts and the
show goes on. As Coach Neubauer so often quoted, "The older I get the
better I was."

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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