ANOTHER ONE Now and then I actually meet people who complain about the fact that they have another birthday coming up. They are going to be one year older and insist they don't like - even the idea of growing older – one little bit.
I have just from the celebration, by family and friends, of my 90th year on planet Earth and it has been a very good day. I look forward to more of them. The present tally is: Ninety down and ten more to go!”
2016 will see me hit the one-hundred year mark. After that I'll just have to take my chances, I suppose.
You may think such talk to be an idle whim; the prattle of an Old Man. Not so. I've been working on that plan for a good many years and I am convinced that's the way things are headed. I make an honest attempt to provide form my physical self all those qualities thought to be essential to extended years of enjoyable. There's adequate rest, for instance, and I don't let any of these become overdone, thoughtless habit, this includes as much physical work as the body can endure – the body, I said, not the mind which can do some tricky stuff you don't want and certainly don't need if you are at all serious about adding to your number of my years.
It can be done. It is being done. Who was it recently - and in the bright world of comedy, too - George Allen who aimed at a hundred and made it. Right away, another funny-bone Jimmy Durante, I think, pledged to try to outdo him. If you have lingering doubts read the Obit columns in your local paper and watch many one hundred-plus persons are particularized in print
Funeral homes are waiting longer these days.
A plan to celebrate my one hundredth birthday has become a matter of observing proper etiquette, as well. Several years ago, when a young lady surgeon at University Hospital, Charlottesville, Virginia accepted me from a helicopter as a bundle about to burst and fashioned a new aorta for me, I felt re-made and ready. I invited her to be present at my 100th Birthday, February 25, 2016. She accepted and promised to be there. Now, you wouldn't want me to fail to keep my word, would you?
It's still ”on” Doctor H. Ninety down - only ten to go!
A.L.M. February 25, 2006 [c417wds]
