So it is with an air of wistfulness and a full belly that I ruminate on the last 40 years of life here on Earth. In the grand scheme of things, 40 years of one person’s life has as much impact on the universe as a fly’s burp has on the New York stock exchange. However, my personal universe is sufficiently contracted that I am the center of it. Kind of like Zaphod Beeblebrox when using the Total Perspective Vortex in an artificial universe, if you catch my drift.
I keep having new iterations of my mid life crisis, as seen here, here and here as my life is inexplicably elongated in potential by careful living and the utter avoidance of so many near-death experiences. As my projected life-span increases, the opportunity to be half way through it expands to become a never-ending period of topless cars, women, and vodka bottles. There is only one real topless woman in my life, if truth be told, but who really wants truth from a blog? You can get truth from the mirror with a line of amphetamines any time you need it. As a friend likes to say, “I have a tick in the partner box”, which is neither as painful as it sounds, nor involves any parasitic insects near anyone’s genitalia. And that, lady and gentleman, is the point of monogamy. So, my tall long-suffering partner calmly holds my hand during these mid-life crises, and waits for normal service to resume.
So taking one of these mid-life crises and folding my estimated future life neatly about it, does this infer anything about the next half? Take the current hispid incarnation of Mr. Ron as an example – his fortieth birthday smiling at him from the trigger end of the barrel. Will the next half be a reflection of the first? What happened in the first half anyway?
I cover the first forty years here.
Given that the future isn’t really governed by the past unless you want it to be, I might just become a warlord or a billionaire philanthropist in the next forty. In the unlikely event that I live past 250 years old, I know that I have to build a statue to a friend, and if I die tomorrow, it’s probably because of the one pound burger. If I die on Sunday, it’s probably because of the three pound burger.
Which reminds me. If you want to see me eat such a burger, show up sometime around 2:30p on Sunday at the aforementioned venue. It won’t be pretty I’m sure.
If you’re wondering what the answer to the question in the title is, I think it’s a trick question. I don’t want to grow up.
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