Jaws 3
Today I read about a shark that was 350 years old, the oldest living thing on the planet with a backbone, what we on the South End call a vertebrate. It lives in very cold water and the science boyz figure maybe — although they have no proof — that this promotes longevity. Before you turn up your air conditioner to the temperature of a meat locker, maybe you should wait until the results are in and the double blind tests are conclusive. Course you could always move to Fairbanks. Although I suspect those Alaskans don’t live to be 300.
Most folks would love to find the Fountain of Youth, some way to live long as Methuselah. I got a friend, who’s a pharmacist no less, and he takes 100 pills a day in hopes of stalling the onslaught of cellular decay. He says he’s having trouble getting the last few dozen down. I said you think it’s bad now, wait til you’re 200.
I’m only one sixth as old as that shark, but the thought of living 5 more of these lifetimes would only fill me with dread. A lot of old codgers crowding the planet doesn’t seem like a prescription for paradise to this old fart. It’s not like most of us would learn from our mistakes — we’d just keep learning new ones.
I guess I’m entering Old Age. At least that’s what my aches and pains are trying to tell me. My mother just went into a nursing home. Got her own room, two really, TV, refrigerator, stove, pretty much everything she had at home, just a smaller area. I ask her what she’s doing and she says, every damn time, nothing. But she wants to go home. Home is where she never left the house either and is pretty much what she’s doing now, nothing. Old age, I suppose, is where what’s behind looks better than what’s ahead. If that’s true, then maybe I’m not as old as I think. What I think is I’m glad I’m not that shark.
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