27 Years Later

It happened to me while I was rummaging through my desk drawer looking for my weekly pill container - one of those plastic things with a separate sealed cube for each day's worth of pills. I stumble across the flotsam from past lives: a transcript from NYU Graduate Film School (entered Fall 1979). It is a musty xerox. Grades for film production, directing, acting. I was 27 years old when I went there. I remember being embarrassed to let anyone know how old I was since just about everyone else had just emerged from college and it had taken me until my 27th birthday to get out of college. It is now 27 years later.

Other bits from the past surface. Here's a business card from the software company I started: Tigercub Software, Inc: Delivering Lotus Notes to All PCs in Your Company. You don't even know what Lotus Notes is - and if you do - probably hate it.

That was my slogan. I remember sitting with my partners in the Indian restaurant telling them how I had come up with the name: Tigercub. It was based on an old saying: If you want tiger cubs, you need to go into the tiger's cave. Similar to the New York lotto slogan: you need to be in it to win it.

That was another two years of mostly wasted energy. (Though I put up my first web site for Tigercub so you might think of this site as a tiger cub - now grown up.)

Here's the small album with pictures of the old girlfriend. She must be retired to Florida by now.

Here are all the empty pill bottles from years with the chronic disease. With memos about doctor's appointments. With keys from an old car. Keys from the old summer house - long gone.

You're only as old as you feel.

My nose is running and my back is sprained. I'll be sixty in 6 years. These are facts, my friend. You can't argue with facts. If all goes as it is supposed to you get about 7 decades in this country. So much of it wasted.

Those first two decades are almost entirely a waste. You don't control your own destiny. Everything is about the future. They're gonna make sure you feel guilty about something or other and try and get you ready for the rest of your life. Be careful because you may find that the so-called rest of your life that you've been preparing for doesn't arrive. You're always preparing for the next decade.

I'm supposed to be preparing now for the last two decades, 6 and 7. Screw that. That's about all I've learned. What am I going to do - retire at 62.5? Retire from what? I'm already retired, I just don't have the retirement program to prove it.

Well, the cat jumped up and is sitting on my lap purring away, so I guess this confession must come to an end. Besides, there's still more flotsam to wade through.

At least I'm not alone. This has got to be the largest aging population in American history right now. Remember how old "64" sounded, when you heard the Beatles sing, "When I'm 64?" I remember learning that song on the guitar. How quaint it all sounded. Now it sounds damned close.