People Are a Whole Lot Like Cars...

When I was young I believed I would live forever.

Or, if I ever even considered the act of someday, somehow, mis-managing to, like, DIE, I managed to brush it off quickly and with terminal velocity.

And then have another beer.

In addition, I believed, despite a whole bunch of $cash invested in my education, that our bodies are One Major Organism, working in synchronicity with each other to keep up us alive.  Because if everything's working, like it was "designed," then we have no Earthly reason to contemplate the why's and wherefore's about a liver or a heart or a brain or a foot.  We should be focusing on populating the Earth, as God had impolitely demanded (Genesis, 1:9).

And God knows I did my very best.  Ahem!  On 6 continents.

Howevvvveeeerrr, as one ages, which is thus far sort of a "given," you discover that you were all wrong about your "synchronicity" thinking.  Because the older you get, the more you come to understand each and every part and piece of your aged body will start sending you error messages.  Like on the dashboard of an 1987 Toyota Celica.  Except far, far more serious.

Did you know that the average age at death of a White male in 1850's Dodge City, Kansas was?  44.  That would be, Forty Four.  Just about half what it is today (76.8).  And when they died, they took the Dusty Trail Discharge from such ailments as an infected wisdom tooth.  Or a rattlesnake bite.  Or what they called "consumption" (tuberculosis).  

And then we went on a tear inventing new medicines for new ailments in the 19th and 20th Centuries.  Like smallpox, and measles, and God love them, polio.  So that cancer, which plagues us today, was no problem at all 170 years ago.  Because people didn't live long enough to get it!  

So now our old folks are dying of the stuff the fat dancing girls in catchy TV commercials are blathering about.  Stuff like "Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyrediculopathy."  

Which didn't exist in 1850.  Or if it did, we didn't live long enough to contract it.

So in fact we're very much like that 1987 Toyota Celica.  With 150,000 miles on the clock.  There are about 28,000 parts in a Toyota Celica of that year.  And there are millions and millions (billions!) of parts in our bodies.

That Toyota's been well maintained, oil changed every 7,000 miles, washed and waxed regularly.  Excepppppt, by now it has a leaky main seal ($1,800.00).  And it's power steering pump needs replaced ($649.80).  And the struts and shocks are in need of the figurative emergency room makeover ($1,288).  None of those ailments will stop that ever-lovin' Celica from operating, but they're gonna' leave you high and dry one day unless you pay attention.  And go to the mechanic and get them fixed.  

If he can...  

And oh yeah, one more thing.  The doctor (mechanic) tells you there's this suspicious "clicking sound" coming from your (gulp!) oil pan.  Just sayin'...

One of these days I'm going to have to visit the Celestial DMV.  We all are.  We show up, we give them our information, they ask us to take a chair and wait for our names to show up on those infernal TV screens. 

And then...

I was asked by Daughter No. 1 the other day how I felt.  I thought for a minute, pointed to my left upper arm, just above the elbow, and said, "It feels fine right there."  She started laughing.  I joined in.  But it wasn't funny...  

And another thing, when people ask you how you're doing, they really don't want to know.  A quick, "Okay, thanks," will do.  Nothing more is needed nor desired.  They're just trying to be polite.  They're really looking at you like they're surprised you're still on this side of the veil.  Like they do a lepodoptera with a pin stuck in his back.  Sort of like they're now able to view our President.  Without that "Cheap Fakes" baloney they dreamed up in the bowels of the White House.  

Because lying In D.C. is the coin of the realm.    

Not that I blame his handlers for coming up with an excuse for his dimentia.  Like "He has a cold" halfway through the debate.  Or he had jet lag from a trip he took two weeks ago.  Like that.  I'm guessing they were updating their resumes between such flimsy excuses... 

So, I'm not gonna' tell you about my five back surgeries or my neuropathy or my prostatitis, or that persistent rash, or fading eyesight, you really don't want to know.  But like that '87 Celica, and that Timex watch of old, and you, my faithful Fellow Patriots, we're still ticking.

For now...