As I write this, I am 21. When you read this, I’ll be 22. Yes, this is the very sort of inconsistency that keeps hope alive that someday, I will realize my dream of meeting Dr. Timothy Leary inside a black hole.
But, aside from this digression, my 22nd birthday leaves me with an odd feeling.
You see, it’s the first of the birthdays beyond the point where birthdays are good news in this culture.
Everyone loves birthdays when they are a kid, because it’s the one day of the year you are lavished with gifts and attention without the annoyance of being reminded of the “true meaning” of this or that holiday.
Then, as an adolescent, you become excited about the prospect of being incrementally accorded the legal rights and freedoms of an adult, thus gradually leaving behind that awkward stage when the only time you are considered an adult is when you’re on trial.
After the age of 21, however, birthdays just mean you’re a year older (and in my case, a year older yet still riddled with teen-age acne and unable to grow decent facial hair to cover the pimples).
Of course, I’m not quite 30, when birthdays mean you’re another year past your warranty expiration.
Which brings me to my family. I am the youngest, and as such, subject to increasingly banal stories of the embarrassing things I did when I was 2.
The flip side is I get watch everyone around me start to sag, droop, drool and generally get uglier by the year. Some upside.
Another (dis)advantage is that I get to hear the older members of my family talk about their virtually weekly trips to the office of this or that doctor.
For those who can’t directly relate to this, believe me, it is not fun to hear about where grandpa is getting a tube shoved in him this week.
Aside from making me as desperate to vomit as I am to graduate, it also makes me think about the medical profession’s obsession with tubes. It seems as though every time you wander into a hosptial off the street, someone’s brandishing a tube at you.
It would be uproariously funny, of course, if I pronounced that the state of health care in this country went down the tubes with the advent of all these tubes. In actuality, however, the state of American health care entered its death throes when the word “medicines” was eliminated in favor of “meds.”
After I finish my soliloquy on tubes, however, I begin to wonder if it’s all really worth it.
I mean, how good is your life if you aren’t allowed to wear clothing that closes in the back? Besides, if you do get out of the hospital, there’s still war, famine, poverty, inflation, traffic, anxiety, fear, shrill noises, lies, greed, leaky faucets, oppression, cockroaches, the local news, loose threads and John Travolta with which you have to deal.
And what are you sticking around for? Your uncaring children? One more breath of industrially-blackened air? The Press You Luck marathon coming up on the Game Show Network?
Well, a lot of people are afraid of dying because they think it might be extremely painful during the moment of death.
Well, since no one has ever told us, I figure death has as decent a chance to feel like a deep-body massage as it does a leg being sawn off.
As I write this, I am 21. When you read this, I’ll be 22. Yes, this is the very sort of inconsistency that keeps hope alive that someday, I will realize my dream of meeting Dr. Timothy Leary inside a black hole.
But, aside from this digression, my 22nd birthday leaves me with an odd feeling.
You see, it’s the first of the birthdays beyond the point where birthdays are good news in this culture.
Everyone loves birthdays when they are a kid, because it’s the one day of the year you are lavished with gifts and attention without the annoyance of being reminded of the “true meaning” of this or that holiday.
Then, as an adolescent, you become excited about the prospect of being incrementally accorded the legal rights and freedoms of an adult, thus gradually leaving behind that awkward stage when the only time you are considered an adult is when you’re on trial.
After the age of 21, however, birthdays just mean you’re a year older (and in my case, a year older yet still riddled with teen-age acne and unable to grow decent facial hair to cover the pimples).
Of course, I’m not quite 30, when birthdays mean you’re another year past your warranty expiration.
Which brings me to my family. I am the youngest, and as such, subject to increasingly banal stories of the embarrassing things I did when I was 2.
The flip side is I get watch everyone around me start to sag, droop, drool and generally get uglier by the year. Some upside.
Another (dis)advantage is that I get to hear the older members of my family talk about their virtually weekly trips to the office of this or that doctor.
For those who can’t directly relate to this, believe me, it is not fun to hear about where grandpa is getting a tube shoved in him this week.
Aside from making me as desperate to vomit as I am to graduate, it also makes me think about the medical profession’s obsession with tubes. It seems as though every time you wander into a hosptial off the street, someone’s brandishing a tube at you.
It would be uproariously funny, of course, if I pronounced that the state of health care in this country went down the tubes with the advent of all these tubes. In actuality, however, the state of American health care entered its death throes when the word “medicines” was eliminated in favor of “meds.”
After I finish my soliloquy on tubes, however, I begin to wonder if it’s all really worth it.
I mean, how good is your life if you aren’t allowed to wear clothing that closes in the back? Besides, if you do get out of the hospital, there’s still war, famine, poverty, inflation, traffic, anxiety, fear, shrill noises, lies, greed, leaky faucets, oppression, cockroaches, the local news, loose threads and John Travolta with which you have to deal.
And what are you sticking around for? Your uncaring children? One more breath of industrially-blackened air? The Press You Luck marathon coming up on the Game Show Network?
Well, a lot of people are afraid of dying because they think it might be extremely painful during the moment of death.
Well, since no one has ever told us, I figure death has as decent a chance to feel like a deep-body massage as it does a leg being sawn off.
Who’s to say getting hit by a truck won’t become the next “in thing” to do at spas?
I’ve never heard anyone complain about any pain after getting hit by a truck. Not once.
Compare that to all the dinner-table discussion on how much a tube in the American Medical Association’s official orifice-of-the- week hurts.
Not that I’ve never had a few tubes inserted into myself. Everyone has a “procedure” or two in their lifetime.
As far as I’m concerned, when it gets to be one or two procedures a year, that’s it.
I’ll be content to let whatever it is inside me with which these doctors are so intent engaging in tubular warfare grow its own course.
Well, on second thought, maybe I’ll let them do that third surgery in a given year.
That little bugger inside of me might start keeping me from achieving my “goal weight.”
Plus, whatever it is might start inviting its friends over, and I don’t approve of their crazy hair and makeup, especially with all of my impressionable organs around. So a fourth tubefest is OK.
When was that Press Your Luck marathon going to be on?

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