Turned on Elton John’s I’m Still Standing and played it at the reflection in the mirror. Told the guy the story about the Grim Reaper’s knocking on the door was something else huh.
A couple of days later the face is still slightly swollen and things are a hair off but very few would notice and those that might wouldn’t notice without careful examination.
One of the guys asked me about it and I said, “Alex, I’ll take near death for $500 please.”
“Was it that serious?”
“They say if I had taken another dose it might have been but I never had anything worse than the swelling and the strange appearance it gave me. If you asked me about all of the ways that early death could catch me an allergic reaction is among the very last I would list.”
The chuckle on the other line was what I expected because they have known me long enough to know bungee jumping, skydiving accidents, getting hit by a bus or eaten by the sole surviving T-Rex are more likely.
And they also know that T-Rex and their ridiculously short arms would be hard pressed to take me out, that is not my fate…it is just not.
Neither is an allergic reaction to a drug or bite from some exotic sea snail. Those things are too quick and too easy, the hard way is my way and neither are hard.
The Library Of Alexandria
Given my druthers I’d prefer to die a natural death many decades from now, still at the top of my game mentally and as close to it physically as I can be.
If not that way, well maybe I can make like Indiana Jones and discover some ancient version of the library of Alexandria and meet a different sort of demise fighting mummies and ancient wardens of said library.
That would make a pretty good story, now wouldn’t it.
And you’d know I’d have a roll of quarters stashed in a pocket just in case I had to smash one of those mummys in their bandaged face.
Grandpa Wilner’s advice there was solid, don’t ask me how I know because I won’t tell you if it is real or just a story you don’t know.
Hell, you don’t know quite a few and some of them really happened.
I have lived a life and sometimes I think it is just getting started again, blame that on being able to visualize being an empty nester.
And for the sake of posterity let me say sometimes my daughter shares some of my finer characteristics in far too large a dose for a kid her age.
If she would take a moment to be less independent she might recognize the old guy is on her side and that I might have a useful piece of advice on some particular topics.
Hope she is smarter about it than I was. She’ll be fine regardless of what approach she takes because she is good at problem solving, but she’ll be less stressed if she avoids doing some of it the hard way.
But hey, what does an old man know about anything. 😉
****
Texas weather is different from where I grew up. Been living here long enough to have seen the seasons cycle through a bunch of times and one thing jumps out at me.
It always feels like a master switch is thrown and the weather turns from hot to cold and then back again.
That is an over simplification that doesn’t tell you about the thirty degree swings that make you wonder WTF just happened to the master thermostat.
Nor does it tell you about days like today where the weather was simply beautiful and you had to go outside to enjoy the warmth of the sun on your back and deep blue skies.
Talk about restorative.
Just Getting Started
I can feel all sorts of changes around me, puzzle pieces being moved and slotted into place.
Can’t tell you if it is karma, destiny, fate or just the result of an enormous amount of hard work and maybe it doesn’t matter.
But I know something is going on and that I am just getting started. Pretty damn exciting and perhaps a bit nerve wracking.
Sometimes it is a hell of a ride, this thing called life.
