Hello, and welcome to what I'm expecting to be a long good-bye note.
68 years ago today, at about this very minute, my head had collapsed into itself, my shoulders had hunched forward, closing around my inner organs, and I was being forced down through my mother's birth canal.
68 years ago today, about now, my collapsed head was probably emerging into what we all now think of as 'the real world'; those soft bones were resuming their more or less globe-like shape, and the attending doctor, in the delivery room of St. Margaret's Hospital, in Montgomery AL, was probably thinking about something else, while the rest of my wrinkled little body followed.
68 years ago today, right about now, the attending nurse -- who may or may not have also been a nun -- wrote my given name, my length and weight, and other information about me, on an official birth certificate, giving the time as 3:40 pm, the date as October 16th, in the year of 1946.
Today, I'm lounging on a hand-me-down sofa that just fits into our den, with 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' muted on the TV. (I've already seen this episode anyway, and there's no projectile vomiting in it...) I'm dressed in stained khaki-colored camouflage cargo short, an A-shirt with a little stain in the front, and the cheapest flip flops I've ever had, that I bought out of desperation, in a general store outside Trenton ME, last summer, just before the transmission on the Honda Odyssey gave out, and I had to have it towed, at 6:30 in the morning, all the way up to Portland, to see whether or not I would be driving back to New Jersey, or filing a change of address notice.
Today, I weigh 194 lb, stand at 6'2" and change, and am more or less left-handed. These, on a list of innumerable details which would have been unknowable, not only to that squalling wet new human, but, in all likelihood, to everyone else in that room. If not in the state of Alabama. If not, in fact, in the whole world.
But you already knew that.
What you may not know -- just yet -- is that, having reached the age of 68 (having, as the Swedes say, 'filled 68 years'), and, according to Psalm 90, Verse 10, in the King James version of the Christian Bible, 'The days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.', it seems that I now have... 730 days to live.
And I thought -- well, this is as good a time as any of whatever time I still have left, to start writing about -- well, probably almost anything, really. But mostly about this dour countdown, and whatever may happen as the hours tick away.
My own life span's neglibility became evident to me, was maybe around 2 am, on some weekday, in the autumn of 1978. I was working the midnight shift, sitting in the computer room, on the eighth floor of the main building of the Rhode Island State Department of Employment Security, absently minding the IBM 360 as it chuckled through its calculations of how many Rhode Island residents were and weren't working that month. Rumor had it that the numbers were fixed; I didn't really care -- I was working there to save money, so I could move to New York and pursue a career in the theater.
But on that particular day, I didn't have enough saved yet, to be able to achieve lift-off, and as I performed my official duties, I was likely to think about any number of things. It just so happened that, on that particular day, I'd happened on an article in the local paper, about one billion dollars.
It was one of those whimsical bits of fluff that show up in the media with a certain degree of regularity, along with stories on local psychics and haunted city buildings and amazing child artists we somehow never hear about ever again. This particular author had apparently figured out exactly how big a room I would need, if I wanted to store my billion one dollar bills in one place, or how tall a stack of those single dollar bills would be, if I wanted to pile my billion dollars up, one bill at a time. I learned how many times my billion dollars would stretch around the earth's equator, if I were to lay them end-to-end, and could somehow get them to stay there. (I don't think this figure included changes in altitude, like the mountains in Ecuador for instance, it only occurred to me sometime later) I also learned how close to the moon that same line of one billion one dollar bills, laid end to end, would get.
None of this was very interesting to me, though, as not one of these things were what I would typically do with my own money -- which of course never approached anything like even the very leading edge of billion-dollar-hood. All I do with my money, aside from wadding it up in my front pocket, and probably dropping the odd $5 or $10 from time to time, out of sheer slovenliness, is spend it.
So I thought I'd figure out, for myself, how long it would take, to spend one billion dollars, if I were born with exactly that much money in a bank account, and I had to spend it, in equal daily outlays, for the full extent of the biblical threescore and ten. (I double-checked the wording of that particular verse in the Bible I was given in September of 1956, almost ten years after my head had collapsed and then popped back into shape again, and while I was living in an orphanage in Mars PA. But I think I'll follow that particular tangent a bit later. Should there be a later, that is) I did the simple math, with a ballpoint pen, on a sheet of blank paper -- totting up just how many days there are, in 70 years. I figured the division would more or less take care of itself.
My midpoint, in solving the math problem, turned out to be 25, 567 and one-quarter days, which comprise the 70 years during which I would spend this actually unimaginable imaginary sum of money (no interest coming in, no days off...). And the final answer, of what I would have to spend, on a daily basis, to go through one billion dollars in my seventy years, turned out to be $39,112.53.
I was going to write my own article on the topic, breaking down just how long it would take, for that newborn -- or, at least, that newborn's trustworthy adult proxies -- to pay for round-the-clock nursing care, until it was no longer needed, and housing, and food, and clothes and other necessities. But thinking, in terms of a lifetime, instead of a period of about two weeks. So I tossed in a college education, and a car, and maybe another car....
But by that time I wasn't really interested in the billion dollars anymore. I was more deeply struck by this measly number: a lousy 25,567 days. And six hours. Of which paltry number, I had already 'spent', I guess you'd say, a little more than half.
So, now, the inevitable countdown begins. Why not? I'm in relatively good health, I think. I am playing host to a pacemaker, its miniscule copper corkscrew-tipped wires burrowed into the muscle walls of my right auricle and ventricle, helping my heart pumping at a regular pace. I may have the beginnings of macular degenration, although my wonderful opthalmologist can't quite be sure, until maybe five years from now. (I don't have the heart to tell her she'd best not plan my appointment schedule too far ahead -- that's way over budget, time-wise) I take some antidepressants and anxiety-relief medications every day, and the thought of having even these more or less benign drugs in my system makes me a little nervous. I make myself go to the gym at least twice a week. I've only smoked seven cigarettes in my entire life, which resulted in my throwing up in the rose bushes planted in the front yard of one of the coolest kids in my high school, who'd invited me over to a graduation day party at her house, probably only because high school was over. I'm in a long-term relationship, which will clock in at a monstrous 29 years next May, if I manage to behave.
I worship coffee. I hate going to bed. I expect the worst, pretty much at all times. I'm plagued with shame and guilt, which I suspect that all the medicines in the world would not significantly reduce for anything but the briefest periods. I may drive too fast, but I rationalize it as decisiveness, and a conscious effort to avoid wasting anyone's time. I think about suicide on a more or less steady basis. I'm immensely impatient, and harbor deep reserves of anger. I'm sure there are some other things wrong with me too, but I can't remember what they are. Which, of course, is probably one of them.
I would like, for the remaining time, to continue to witness, via this blog, the dwindling of the sand in my particular little hourglass. Or, as it looks to me now, my particular little egg timer. I would prefer to speak openly, but I probably won't. I'm not wild about getting comments on my writing, because I'm basically a coward and a snob, in pretty much equal proportions, and I very rarely read them anyway. I'm more likely to divert myself with old movies, and episodes of Project Runway...
But now I've got to go to Madison NJ, for my weekly talk therapy appointment, with my new-ish therapist, Joe, whose own birthday was yesterday. (Say hi, Joe!) I was going to make some cookies, for us, but I went to the thrift store instead. I'm arriving early, so I can maybe treat myself to a better-than-usual meal -- although I'll probably go to the coffee shop instead, and spend the extra time, playing on this neat-o laptop computer, which John gave me for my birthday two years ago, and which is substantially smaller, and significantly lighter, than the wet, squirmy red baby boy I was, 68 years ago.
Or, to be thematically correct, as I was, exactly 24,320 days ago, today.
(Copyright, 2014, by Walter Zimmerman) (I'll put the correct copyright thingie here, when I remember how to do it...)
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