"Speaking of Death..."

Even though in my last post I declared I would live to be at least 100 it got me to thinking and I think that I may have over-stated the length of my life. My family has a bad habit of dying off pretty young in life. One grandfather died of a massive heart-attack at 42 years of age. That used to seem old to me, but it’s very young now. Trust me.

Thinking of how my family dies young, and thinking of mortality itself it got me a little concerned. I started thinking of my own impending death.

You should know, I have nothing really to fear about heart-disease, cancer, or any of the other nasty things that can kill you (including old age). It dawned on me, no matter how well I take care of myself, I’m still going to die young.

You see, if you know me, you know I’m a bit accident-prone. I believe I mentioned this in my first post. I have been in 14 automobile accidents (at last count), I have totaled 4 cars just setting at a red light and being rear-ended! I have a big scar on my fore head from when a CRAZY WOMAN driver ran a GREEN light and rammed into me! She didn’t even look!

Not only automobile accidents but I have had other accidents as well. For instance, I’ve fallen over 20 feet off a ladder that was SUPPOSED to stay in the tree. (FYI, when you cut a limb it gets lighter and even though your ladder is on the tree side of the branch, your ladder will have nothing to lean against any longer. There’s such a thing as gravity, you may have heard of it? It will pull you ever more rapidly toward the ground. Now, the fall didn’t hurt me. It was the sudden stop at the bottom. -looking through my Guinness Book of World Records- Just what IS the longest recorded parenthesis ever written? I think I’m in the running but not sure.) What was I even talking about? Oh yeah…my brushes with death….

So, I figure I have no worries with all the ailments that plague your “normal” folk! I’ll be terribly disfigured, possibly decapitated, in a horrible accident of some kind. And, knowing as how I’m FAR from normal, this will be no typical accident like an automobile. No, I will be the guy you watch on the evening news that was trampled by a herd of platypuses. Mmm…..that’s interesting. I’ve never thought about what the plural for platypus was. Is it platypusi? Or, platypuses? Or perhaps it’s platypusy? Who knows? And another thought just hit my ADHD brain….do platypuses actually run in a herd? Or is a group of platypuses a tribe, a flock, a pride? Mmm…all interesting questions to research on the internet later. Be sure to get back with me on what you learn.

But I digress (don’t I say that a lot?).

I started looking for some symptoms that I was dying. After all, I’d just seen the doctor and even though he’d told me I was completely healthy, I didn’t really trust his opinion since he’s out to kill me anyway. I learned at that doctors visit that I don’t have prostate cancer. I learned this by being brutally violated in unspeakable ways by my doctor! I thought about calling the police but felt too ashamed to call. I doubt they would have believed what he’d done to me anyway.

But again, I digress.

I started looking for signs that I was dying and I’ve come up with a theory. Please allow me to explain….

One day, not long ago, my wife decided I would look really cool if I started wearing sandals like all the teenagers are wearing. Of course you realize, there’s absolutely no way a 37 year old fat man is going to look anything like a teenager. Nor is he even going to look cool wearing sandals. He’s going to look like a 37 year old fat man TRYING to look cool wearing sandals to look like a teenager. Well, that’s the look I pulled off perfectly.

If you’ve ever worn sandals, attempting to pull off the impossible and look like a cool teenager, you will know you wear said sandals with no socks.

I feel it only prudent to mention here, that this is indeed the correct way to wear sandals. Apparently something happens when you pass the age of 50 and you forget this fact. At that age, you go find the longest socks you can possibly find, doesn’t matter what color, and you wear those long socks with your sandals. If you’re one of those people, SHAME ON YOU! And then you stick those wrinkly legs in shorts as well? I’m shuddering now with the mental image. If you’re one of those people, put some pants on and put your wing-tips back on. Do your part to clean up the environment!

But yet again, I digress…..(hard to keep up with an ADHD mind isn’t it?)

That night, I get home. Mind you, it had been a long HOT day in the Houston area. If you’ve never been to Houston I’m still sure you’ve heard about Houston’s humidity, it’s legendary. Just about every day the humidity runs in the 210% range so there’s a lot of moisture in the air. I take my sandals off….

WHAT IS THAT???? I knew what that was…it was the smell of death! That putrid, decaying, rotting smell that is the smell of decaying flesh. The smell of death.

So my theory is this, you start dying from your feet first. I know, apparently my feet are already mostly dead. They already have the smell of death when I wear sandals with no socks. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before they start smelling like death when I too wear wing-tips.

I can deal with dying feet. You can always cover them up. It’s when it moves up my body and the rest of me starts dying. If it starts at the bottom and moves up, there are some parts there that I don’t want to die. There are some parts that I would rather die FOR.

So if you’re worried about death…start smelling your feet at night.

I now amend my last post and say I’ll probably live to be 38. And that’s only 3 weeks away.