Okay, let's get it out of the way: I turned 61 today. That's neither a good nor bad thing; it's just a thing. Frankly, I'm more than a little surprised to still be alive at this age. I had a five-graft CABG on my 39th birthday, so those grafts and my heart have held up pretty well for 21 years.
That's not to say my heart is in great shape, because it's not. It gets weaker every year. But given the alternative, I'm pretty happy with the outcome.
When you're a teenager or in your early twenties, you think you'll live forever. You do lots of stupid things like smoke and drink and drive too fast. You don't think about getting old or dying. That shit happens to other people--old people, mostly.
Funny thing is, I've always known that I'd die someday. I knew it from a very early age. I think it fucked up my head for a long time. Kids shouldn't think about such things, they should just be kids.
Now, I didn't sit around worrying about dying today or tomorrow. That would have been completely perverse. But the thought was always there, sort of gnawing away in my brain. I still played baseball and hunted squirrels and cruised chicks. I learned to use deodorant and cologne because girls didn't like you if you smelled. To this day I still occasionally use Jade East, something I learned about in junior high. Too bad they don't still make Hai Karate. That was another of our youthful favorites. We used to slather the shit on like there was no tomorrow. You could probably smell us coming from a block away if the wind was right.
Anyway, happy birthday to me. It turned cold and nasty this afternoon and snowed like a bitch, but that shouldn't be seen as any kind of omen. The March 25ths I've seen have been hot, warm and cold; dry, wet and wetter. That's March in a northern clime. Got nothing to do with me.
Just remember, on March 5th, 1953, Joe Stalin died. Twenty days later I was born (six weeks early, by the way, which was very early in 1953). No cause and effect implied, no post hoc, ergo, propter hoc logic involved. Just the facts, ma'am.
