Birthday Math

I'm 68 today and it's a pretty weird place to be. There's no denying my age, but whatever fleeting notion I had when I was younger of this stage of life is not playing out as expected.

From earliest childhood memories my grandparents always seemed old even though in reality they were in their early 50's. Pull out photo albums from back then--people 60 and beyond in age did look old and from an actuarial standpoint were old.

Yet here I am with absolutely nothing seriously wrong with me that I'm aware of, at around my high school weight and arguably in the best shape of my life. I don't feel my age; perhaps I'm kidding myself when I think I don't look my age; and Cynthia would vouch for the fact that I often don't act my age.

All of this is a good thing because we've always intended to reach triple digits--that is, at least 100 years old. I was doing the math and realized that I barely reached the two thirds mark of my goal last year. Thinking back that means I'll live as much more as since I was in my early 30's, which is astounding. Our kids were just starting school, our business was flourishing, and I somehow had the energy to be up on a ladder until midnight working on the home we were renovating near downtown Atlanta. It all seems an eternity ago.

Then I thought, "That's not good enough. I want to see Cynthia be 100 too." OK, so now the goal is 104.

And then I thought, "It would suck for her to reach 100 and then I just keel over. We need a little time to celebrate both reaching our milestone, so I'll shoot for 105."

Then I thought, "If I live to 105 we'll celebrate our 84th anniversary. That's not a memorable number." 85 years of marriage and 106 years of age it is then!

Now I'm thinking, "H-m-m-m, but we dated four years before we got married. 89 years together--that somehow feels so incomplete. I know---I'll go for 118! That means we'll have been together 100 years! What a story!!"

I went to tell Cynthia all of this and she was pretty excited too. In fact she yelled in a loud voice:

"N-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-------"!!!!!