The moment you realize you’re basically middle-aged inspires a lot of different reactions in people. Some folks get depressed and think about roads not taken, some people get obsessed with their physical condition and their conversational gambits contract down to various discussions of workouts and nutrition. Some people note it calmly and get back to work, some people have full-on crises, and some people dive into a deep smothering container of denial.
Me, I considered the unlikely fact that I survived my youth.
Je Suis Un Idiot
There’s no dramatic story behind this. I didn’t survive an avalanche or a terrorist attack, I wasn’t doing Drew Barrymore-level drugs when I was ten years old. My life’s been pretty undramatic.
I was, however, quite the idiot.
The sheer number of things I’ve done that should have resulted in my death, dismemberment, or incarceration is astounding. Again, I want to stress that this is not some hint at a dark, kind of cool secret life. This is just standard-issue jackassery that at the time seemed edgy or fun, or was simply not thought about at all. Some of it involved substances. Some of it involved just my own sense of immortality and occasionally a kind of desperate boredom I think is probably restricted to younger folks.
The scariest part? I didn’t think too hard about these scenarios at the time. I was unaware. What if I’m unaware now?
No Cure for Stupid
I mean, it stands to reason if I thought driving along Route 1&9 in New Jersey at 95 miles per hour in a 1978 Chevy Nova whose brakes barely worked was okay when I was 25 years old, I might be thinking some similarly asinine and dangerous activity I’m doing right now is okay. Which means I might kill myself and take out some small portion of the world completely unintentionally, and I’ll die with an expression of utter bafflement on my face.
It’s that realization that I’m a moron that’s so disturbing. I kind of always knew I’d die while, say, trying to drive my car over an opening drawbridge because I’m late for Happy Hour, with Waylon Jennings singing the Dukes of Hazzard theme on the stereo, but I always imagined it would be on purpose, you know? Not the result of a mild mental impairment I’ve been dealing with my whole life.
Oh well. If I’m lucky my eventual death via stupidity will result in something so spectacularly stupid it will at least guarantee that my memory will be eternal, like a plaque in the ground reading Here is the Spot Where Jeff Somers Once Set Himself On Fire Trying to Mix a Flaming Moe.