I Ponder The Meaning of Life

Tomorrow, or today depending on when you're blowing off work to read this gibberish, is my birthday. Please, hold the applause. All I did was show up, and knowing me, I put up a hell of a fight to stay where I was for "five more minutes, just five more minutes." I am turning 37, which for the first time sort of bothers me. Granted there was that time in college when my roommate became so depressed about turning 20 that it started to affect all of the rest of us who were about to leave our teenage years behind, but then someone pointed out that he really had peaked at 18 and had nothing else to look forward to except a series of fat chicks at trcuk stops before the inevitable speedball overdose in a trailer park sometime around 32. We all felt better, although I don't think that revelation did much for my roommate. Who shall remain nameless at this point as I've lost touch with him and for all I know he may be reading this.

No, 37 bothers me because for the first time 40 is not an abstract concept. 40 isn't here yet either, but it's looking at houses in the neighborhood and I can tell that the fucker is going to be moving in soon. May even move into my house, put it's feet up and decide to stay awhile. Turning 30 didn't bother me at all. Possibly because my wife took me to a strip bar the night before, (Yes, Syd, I will tell that story later, but right now I'm feeling philisophical), and then before I knew it 30 had come and gone leaving me with a hangover, an empty wallet and a wife with a new hobby. But this birthday, with a 7 in it, I found vaguely irritating.

As I lay in bed this morning, (Please, try to contain the excitement. Oh, never mind, those were just crickets), I started to go down the road my roommate was on at the age of 19. I started to wonder where I was going to be in the future, what my past meant, what if anything I had accomplished, and who in the future would care. After several loooong seconds of this, I came to a startling revelation.

My college roommate was a whiny-ass pussy, and I'll be goddamaned if I go down that road. Yes, I will turn 37 tomorrow. Yes, it is quite close to 40, and someday soon I will turn 40 as well. It beats the crap out of the alternative, that I do know. In the meantime, I can look back at the first 37 years of the limpy epoch and determine the following:

1) No one should ever, under any circumstances, use the phrase "the limpy epoch". I apologize for doing so, and promise to do it agin in this entry.

2) I have two remarkably bright, well-adjusted and most importantly healthy children. They adore me and I adore them. That alone is reason enough for anyone, not just whiny-ass 36 year olds, to look back on their lives and know that they did OK. If your kids love you becuase they want to, I don't care what else you do or don't do, you're alright.

3) I married out of my league and after 11 years it remains a stable, committed marriage with a lot of crazy antics around every corner. Of course, if homosexuals are ever allowed to wed, our relationship will crumble like a house of cards, because my love for my wife is so shallow that the marrigae of two people of the same sex who I will never meet will rend it to the very core.

4) I consider myself an average looking guy, and after 37 years, I will never be mistaken for Tom Cruise. By the same token, I will never be mistaken for Tom Cruise. That guy's an idiot.

5) I have a career that, for reasons I couldn't even begin to explain, is doing very well. In fact, because of that career, my name is posted on at least three occasions in books that gather appellate law for future generations to determine what the law is for various issues. In short, even aside from my children my name will live on as long as Connecticut follows its past, becuase I have taken part in precedent setting arguments before our higher courts. And on at least one occasion my name isn't listed in the "Loser" category.

6) I have competed on and won at Jeopardy. The next day I completed that little circle of life by losing badly. And yeah, Alex Trebek is just as arrogant in person. No, I am not Ken Jennings. No, I will not loan you money.

7) I have a small group of friends from whom I can ask anything, up to and including "help me hide the evidence", and it would be done, no questions asked. I would respond in kind if the opposite were the case.

8) All in all, in 37 years I have done OK. I seriously doubt anyone's going to be building statues to my memory in the future, but I'm OK with that. I seem to have passed the important tests, and sometimes just knowing that is enough.

So I'm not going to worry about 37. Or any other age. I hope none of you do either. I'm just going to keep plodding along and doing what I do. Hopefully for a long while yet to come.