Happy Birthday to me

An incredibly thought-provoking essay on getting older…

As some of you have been nice enough to note, today is my birthday.

Unfortunately – or now that I think about it “fortunately” – I’ve reached the age where birthdays are not so much cause for celebration as reminders that I’m over-the-hill and picking up speed on the downhill slope.

Now here’s something I read that might help explain why time seems to go faster each year and if it’s not true, at least it seems true which is usually enough for most of our presidents and why should you or I be any different:

Your conscious brain (the part you’re aware of) can only hold so much information, so when you’re five years old and someone says “a year from now” it seems like forever because it’s one-fifth of everything you’ve experienced.

But when you’re 50 years old and someone says “a year from now” it’s one fiftieth of everything you’ve experienced and a year doesn’t seem all that long and when I look at my current age and think maybe I’ve got five good years left before someone is changing my diaper, it seems like that stage of Life is right around the corner.

Semi-related story alert

I told my son Paul I changed his diapers when he was young and I expect the same kind of service when I’m old and Paul has let me know that’s not going to happen; he’s going to put me in a “retirement home.”

I told Paul I’d rather go back to college instead.

You get a room and take classes that you might actually pay attention to this time around and they have a lot of fun activities like football games and debates and getting drunk until you puke in the shoe you left next to your bed which either I or one of my brothers actually did and right now I can’t remember which one of us it was.

Also, the phrase “go back to college” makes it seem like I actually attended college which I kind of lost interest in doing when I realized I wasn’t big or fast enough to play college football.

Nevertheless, I enrolled in a few classes at the American River College/ Placerville Campus which turned out to be a few double-wide trailers on the county fairgrounds and I quit before completing a single class because someone offered me a job at the Roos-Atkins clothing store and it turned out part of that job included putting pantyhose on mannequins in store windows which I was doing at Sunrise Mall when I looked up and right outside my mannequin’s window was my high school football coach who was looking back at me like I had just finished performing It’s Raining Men in full drag.

Not (as Jerry Seinfeld would say) that there’s anything wrong with that.

I took the Roos-Atkins job because I needed the money and while it now seems like an unnecessary and unwise Detour in Life it did give me the opportunity to talk to guys who were 60-years-old and selling socks for a living and ask them: “So what the Hell happened?”

I’m pretty sure nobody grows up thinking: “If I work hard and keep my nose to the grindstone maybe someday I can measure other men’s inseam and then try to sell them some over-the-calf dress socks to go with the double-breasted suit they just bought.”

Turned out, all those 60-year-old sock salesman had pretty much the same story.

They took the job for money (just like me) figuring it would be temporary (just like me) and then some Life Event like getting someone pregnant (and I was rolling the dice on that possibility) happened and they never got back to what they really wanted to do.

So being a genius I quit Roos-Atkins and started working in ski shops and print shops and doing some commercial art and drinking a lot of beer and then fell off a 10-story building and landed on a passing flat-bed truck which just happened to be carrying a load of mattresses, which is the most accurate metaphor I can think of for getting a job in newspapers as a political cartoonist kind of by accident and then having a 41-year career drawing funny pictures.

But back to those retirement homes.

I have a friend who worked in one and she said she couldn’t believe the stuff those old folks get up to and it turns out STDs in the elderly are common because if you’ve got one foot in the grave and another one on a roller skate and someone says, “How about it?” you might think what the Hell do I have to lose?

If I exercise and eat right I’m going to be dead in a year anyway and the next thing you know you’re listening to Barry White sing Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Baby.

And while having sex with someone whose skin could be used to make a decent forgery of the Dead Sea Scrolls might not seem all that appetizing, remember what Ben Franklin said to a younger man contemplating marriage to an older woman:

“All cats are gray in the dark.”

So cheer up, we all have that to look forward to.

Back to our semi-conscious brains

If your conscious brain can only hold so much, it stands to reason every time you put some new fact in – like remembering to bring home a quart of milk – it pushes some old fact out the back and stores it in your subconscious which is like your basement and if someone asked you to find something down there you’d have no idea where to look and since we don’t get to choose which fact gets jettisoned like a piece of luggage from a plane not sure it can clear a mountain peak in the Andes (as you may have already noticed, I’m big on metaphors) the old fact that gets pushed out to make room for the new fact just might be your anniversary date or a kid’s birthday or the Parent-Teacher conference you had scheduled for Tuesday night, but missed because you went bar-hopping with coworkers instead, but you’re really not to blame because your wife and/or husband asked you to bring home that goddamn quart of milk.

So, it’s really your spouse’s fault not yours.

I may no longer be able to run fast (like I ever could) but over the years my brain has become much more efficient at providing excuses for some egregious behavior probably because I’ve had so many occasions to need one and my brain gets a lot of exercise in that particular area.

I should build an app called “Excuses-R-Us” and for a modest fee we would provide alibis to those who need one, which eventually includes everyone so it’s a great business model if you overlook the Not-Knowing-How-To-Build-An-App-Or-Precisely-What-Apps-Are flaw.   

The good thing about getting older

Question: Do you know what’s good about having gray hair?

Answer: It’s hair.

So as just about everybody who ever got old eventually says; it beats the alternative.

A fact I’m acutely aware of because my father died young and I expected to die young as well and if someone told me when I was 15 I would live to be 60 I would have taken that deal in a heartbeat.

My father died from a heart attack at the age of 46 and my mom is still going and about to turn 96 (although she swears she’s about to turn 97, but who wants to try and untangle that ball of snakes) so split the difference and I’m scheduled to kick the bucket at 71 although every year my mom sticks around would add time to my Life Sentence, assuming I know anything about genetics and I’m pretty sure I don’t — I didn’t finish that class.

When my father had that fatal heart attack he was up late at night watching TV and eating an apple and if Death (the guy in the ratty robes carrying a farm implement) had informed my dad he would never finish the apple he was eating he probably would have been surprised and if you think real hard there’s a lesson there for all of us.

Enjoy whatever you’re doing because you never know when your time is up.

I’ve been asked what I plan on doing today and the only firm plan I’ve come up with so far is:

1. Don’t eat any apples.

Thanks for your Happy Birthday wishes and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow assuming we both make it.