Happy birthday to me

July 9, 2006

Wasn’t it only yesterday that I was celebrating the beginning of my seventh decade with Bros. Don and Tom in the sunny Napa Valley of California, way out on the left coast? Then how come today I’m kicking off my 76th year? Fortunately no one is planning to “do” my birthday, and I will be more than content to open a few cards, pinch my wife and go to bed at ten as usual.

Of course I sometimes wonder how long I will be allowed to string out this chain of birthdays. Maybe tyromancy would help. My Forgotten English Calendar told me on the 29th of June that this is divining by the coagulation of cheese. Do you suppose my lunch-time cottage cheese would work?

I subscribe to the theory that we all have some grim disease within us that is just waiting for an opportunity to spring up and say, “Boo!I really don’t much care what it is that eventually will scare me to death. I am told that the human being is more or less hard-wired to last until age 85, give or take. I am hoping to stay spry until a month or so before my 85th birthday, at the end of which I will retire as usual at ten and die in my sleep.

I’ve talked to God about that, but He is noncommittal. He usually is about anything more than a few minutes in the future, but if He decides not to honor my modest request, that’s OK with me. I long ago reached the point where It’s OK however he engineers my circumstances, even if I don’t like it. Now, isn’t that magnanimous of me? I thought so.

So… happy birthday to me and let’s wrap this up for another year.

Dave, still on the downwind approach.

Posted by Dave | Filed Under People, Today 

Comments

4 Responses to “Happy birthday to me”

  1. Linda Schmidt on July 9th, 2006 4:23 pm

    Happy Birthday dad! If you’re 75… how old am I? Egads….pushing 50 really hard.
    Hope you have a good day. I do like the new look of orlop, very classy. And again, it looks like you had mom help pick out the color scheme. You do know that only an engineer would describe a human being as ‘hard wired’. How about ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’… and ‘In Thy book they were all written,the days that were ordained for me’.
    I would say you have a few more chapters! Enjoy today! Linda

  2. admin on July 9th, 2006 8:14 pm

    Thankee, thankee.

    You are right: somehow ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’ sounds a little better than hard-wired.

    Thanks for the birthday wishes.

  3. Leslie on July 20th, 2006 3:40 pm

    85, Dad? Why not 95? Is that too much to ask? Just remember - 75 is the new 65. Isn’t that how it works these days? And 50 is the new 40 - that’s what we should tell Linda, who will turn 50 next year. I was smart - I stopped at 39. That’s legal, isn’t it?

    I too like the new Orlop. Very classy.

  4. admin on July 20th, 2006 8:15 pm

    Ho - ho - ho

    Thanks for the thumbs-up on the new Orlop. I think I’ll keep it for a while.

Got something to say?