Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Fifty

Today’s my fiftieth birthday, an event I’ve been preparing for all my life, although I didn’t really know it at the time.

I can, though, assert with certainty that, at last, I am something I will be for the remainder of my days: old!

Fifty is some sort of milestone; even if I live to be a hundred, I’m on the downhill side; even if I live—as I’ve always pretended to believe—to be 112, my days are numbered. (As a matter of fact, today is numbered, according to this site’s calculations 18,263.)

In any case, at this advanced point in my life, I probably should have some words of wisdom to share with the world.

One nugget I could offer is that you should never make a decision based on an idea you came up with when you are stoned. Unfortunately, I came up with that idea after smoking a joint, so I dunno.

Another bit of advice that has served me relatively well is that if you are too impaired to unlock your bike, then you’re too impaired to ride it home. This has only happened to me once, but all the other times (knock wood) I have been able to figure out my combination, I’ve made it home safely.

Generally, it’s been my experience that worrying about things doesn’t improve the situation. Although saying that, I worry whether it’s true.

I subscribe to Woody Allen’s view that 80 percent of success is showing up; and most of the time, I think, you can get away with leaving early, too.

It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, and even easier if you bring a gift.

If you’re having someone review your work, put a few easy-to-correct errors in it, so they won’t dig too deeply for the hard-to-fix ones.

Finally, you're only as old as you feel, so I hereby invite everyone to feel me all over, so we can establish exactly what age I am.

2 Comments:

Blogger Ben said...

Please transfer my comment on Friday, March 09, 2007... to now.

To reiterate: Happy Birthday Dave!

9:22 PM  
Blogger Deb's Lunch said...

Thanks for the calculator, I now know that I, at the age of 51 and about a half, have lived 18,857 days.

happy birthday, Dave

11:34 AM  

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