According to the actuarial tables, I have lived well over half my life. Many men my age are thrown into blind panic by that realization and wind up making perfect fools of themselves. Suddenly made aware of their mortality, they run off with 16-year-old cheerleaders, take up beachcombing, or get themselves pierced in the oddest places.
Some men find solace in drink. But I already drink, and I’m not about to find solace in not drinking. I thought perhaps I’d take a crack at politics. The pay’s pretty good, the perks and the pensions are even better, and you can’t beat the hours. The trouble, though, is that I don’t think I could handle the pressure. I mean, day in and day out those folks are expected to have an opinion about everything. But how can I, when I find myself dozing off as soon as I even hear words such as parity, subsidies and tariff? Imagine spending half your life listening to the blather of Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy? Find a way to bottle their speeches and you could cure insomnia overnight.
It’s not that I lack opinions, it’s just that I don’t think I can carve a career out of them. It’s my opinion, for example, that the two dullest tunes ever written were “September Song” and “Old Man River.” Frankly, I have a hunch they’re the same song with different lyrics. If I were ever captured by enemy forces, they’d only have to threaten to play those songs for me and I’d tell them anything they wanted to know about our troop movements going back to the War of 1812. I think the Geneva Convention delegates were asleep at the switch when they concentrated on mustard gas, and neglected to do a damn thing about those prime examples of musical torture.
If there is anything else about which I have a very strong but unprofitable opinion, it’s that people who risk their necks needlessly are certifiably loony. I realize that everybody doesn’t share my dread of broken bones, pain, and death. But, for the life of me, I don’t understand why. What’s wrong with them? Why would anybody want to do something just so he can experience the thrill of not getting killed for his troubles?
The way I see it, there are thrills and then there are thrills. For example, if I order a French dip sandwich and ask for it lean, and it comes the way I ordered it, that’s a week I don’t need to climb Mt. Everest. If I make three consecutive phone calls without spending half an hour on hold, I hyperventilate from the excitement. But, at my age, for pure exhilaration, nothing quite beats checking the obituary page and not finding my name mentioned.
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©2004 Burt Prelutsky
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