Happy Birthday to Me!

42.

Doesn't seem right somehow.

I mean, 42 is a great number. And while I'm sure I thought 42 was old when I was 21, it seems right in the heart of useful adulthood from this perspective.

But I think it's time for some changes.

I can't become a biological father. Just won't happen without some kind of scientific miracle. (I'm not including cloning; nothing strikes me as less appealing than raising a copy of myself. Make of that what you will, hypothetical reader.) But if my new wife and I adopted a newborn today, I'd be 60 on the child's 18th birthday.

And with the way I'm taking care of my corporeal self, I don't think I'm going to make 60.

I didn't drink until I turned 27. There's alcoholism running through my family, and alcohol always scared me. But I found out about my infertility in the previous year, and I decided what the hell, that gene (assuming it's a genetic thing) wasn't going to be passed, and I'd see what the fuss was about. So on that birthday I had a margarita.

Well, it's 15 years later, and I drink too much. I like whiskey a lot; I like the taste, I like the effect. I don't like the next morning, and I don't like the feeling that I'm not as sharp, generally, as once I was.

So my present to myself this year is a wagon. Wish me luck with it.