Mortality

Nat writes “And whenever someone else sleeps in my bed, if I wake up first, I’m briefly convinced that they’re dead and have to shake them awake before I’m reassured. This is irrational, this is stupid, but there it is.”

I have the same feeling– the other day I went to visit a friend who was having a dinner party, and I was one of the first to arrive; I knocked on her door and she didn’t answer, because she was in the kitchen making dinner for everyone. For the thirty or forty seconds of slightly louder knocking, trying the door, realizing it was unlocked, going back, seeing her alive… I was … well, not convinced. But the thought crossed my mind.

On one of my first visits home from Boston, shortly after a minor scale-and-plane at the dentist and a moderately painful episode of back pain involving lots of advil and lying on the floor during meetings, I told my father, well, it looks like I’ve inherited your back and your gums (both of which give him endless trouble). I meant it as a joke but I think it was one of the most hurtful things I ever said to him.

I have never seen him look so crushed: he has worked so hard all his life to do great things, for humanity and for his family and for himself, but he hasn’t beaten genetics and he hasn’t beaten the fact that human spines and teeth aren’t evolved to last us much beyond reproductive age before they start to wear out.

It’s enough to make me wonder if my retirement fund will pay for all that HGH and titanium exoskeleton I’m going to want. You know, maybe I’m not a cheapskate– maybe I’m just saving my pennies for that new spine and pelvis I’m sure they’ll invent, at some point.

Get cracking, future! I’m continually disappointed in the future. It’s just not as cool as I thought it would be. I remember reading in Discover Magazine in the late 80s that there would be personal aircraft that got 100 miles to the gallon and went 400 miles an hour and would be the size of small cars. And could hover.

Instead we get giant station wagons. Dammit. Where did my train of thought go? Maybe I need new brain equipment too.