Birthday Blues
I’m feeling old today and I need to spread the joy. I turned 55 this week, and when somebody at
the office asked me how old I was, I answered, “More than halfway to death.”
Perhaps I should have spent my birthday doing something more
uplifting than contemplating my own mortality, but it’s becoming harder to
banish morbid thoughts the closer I get to Medicare.
And now for the joy-sharing part. Since age is relative, I invite you to gain
some perspective by playing Age Gauge. I
can’t remember how I found this site. Perhaps I was on Google to find a way to refer to my age that's cheerier
than “older than dirt.”
This particular site asks you to type in your date of birth,
then spits out a list of famous folks who are younger (and older) than
you. This information can be
depressing. For instance, I found out
I’m 4 years and 3 months older than Bill Gates. When he was born and couldn’t even find his toes or focus his eyes, I
was already learning the alphabet and was fully potty trained. Yet even with
this head start I fell so far behind that I have no hope of becoming a
billionaire mogul/philanthropist.
I am thirty years and four months older then Britney Spears,
so it’s possible I’ll be dead when she gets to be my current age. If she is still appearing on the cover of
People magazine when she’s 55, you can just go ahead and shoot me, although I
do have a morbid curiosity about how screwed up her kids will turn out.
On the bright side, I am younger than some people, including
Mick Jaggar, who at the age of 62 has turned into a parody of a caricature,
although he appears positively fresh next to bandmate Keith Richards, who looks
like an apprentice funeral director’s first embalming project.
Also, I am 34 years, 9 months younger than legendary newsman
Walter Cronkite, who famously broke down on the air when reporting the death of
President Kennedy. I was 12 years old
when that happened, as I was reminded by the web site, which also calculates
your age at the time of historical events. Other things I learned: During my first 8 years of life, we still had 49
states. When Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state, it must have been a big deal, but
all I cared about was scoring an extra glass of Ovaltine before bedtime.
The span of my lifetime can be measured by numerous national
tragedies. I was 14 during the Watts riots, 16 when
Martin Luther King was assassinated, and 28 years old when the Iran hostage crisis began. I was all of 29
when President Reagan was shot, 34 when the space shuttle Challenger exploded,
and 43 at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Life is one damn thing after another. And
then you die.
On the bright side, I discovered a new way to state my
age. I’m 19 years, and 10 months younger
than Barbara Walters.
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