Today is my birthday. I'm not in much of a mood to send out another self-promotional career update. I'm being reflective.
I've been thinking about the adjectives people use to describe old people and now that I'm a lot closer to old than young, I figure it's time to give some thought to the ones I want the young whippersnappers out there to apply to me.
‘Spry’ isn’t bad. Neither is ‘eccentric’. And I wouldn’t complain about being called ‘wealthy’. But if I had one adjective, I think I'd want it to be ‘dangerous’.
I’ve never been dangerous.
In junior high, I discovered Led Zeppelin. I'd close the door to my room and crank them up full blast, listening to them over and over as I stared up at the ceiling. Not as some pot-induced psychedelic experience, but because songs like Kashmir were so incredibly innovative, both melodically and rhythmically. I was a band geek.
In high school, I was arrested for dealing drugs, but the cops had to let me off because the vial of white powder I was caught with was actually potassium nitrate. (Yes, potassium nitrate is one of the critical components of gun powder. But I wasn't even making gun powder. I was making smoke so I could analyze the vortex in a tornado chamber I'd built for the science fair.) I was also a science geek.
I never tipped a cow, though there was this one time that I tipped a waiter pretty badly. He took a half hour to take my order, never filled my water glass, and put mayo on my sandwich even after I asked for him not to. I still left him 10%.
The question I ask myself today is whether it's too late to change. I am middle aged, there's no disputing that. So I wonder whether I can spend the second half of my life doing what I didn't do in the first half.
I'm thinking of starting smoking. I want to drive without wearing a seatbelt. I want to carry a gun, or at the very least a Leatherman.
It's my birthday, after all. I can do anything I want.
I think I'll have two pieces of cake.
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