Well, I’m a year older today. Getting older reminds me of the song sixteen tons, with the line “another day older and deeper in debt,” etc. It’s a song about the travails and poverty of miners. Searching for the song also pulled up a note that sixteen tons is equal to 14,514.9558 kilograms. That’s a lot of rock.
The song is a reminder to me that I am incredibly fortunate, and that for all your problems, if you are not working in a mine, you are probably lucky (although the NYT pointed out this week that taxi drivers also face a lot of on-the-job deaths and job-related illnesses, so take what you will from that.)
At any rate, I am thankful today that I am not driving a taxi in New York on the night shift. I am thankful that I am neither a miner nor a minor. I am thankful to have friends to eat dinner with, and another year gone past without tragedy striking me directly.
As Bleeding Gums Murphy might say, I play the blues pretty good for someone with no real problems.
Secretly Ironic 