My Dad and Granddad died at age 69. Bad tickers seem to run in the family. Twenty-one more years (or less). It sort of changes your attitude to a lot of things when you realize your time is more than half-gone.
I’m conflicted.
I’m in the process of getting qualified as a safari operator, and I would love to have you as a guest on one of my trips. But jeez man, I don’t do “croak packages”. Can I offer you something else? Something less, errr…final?
I’d be happy to tour the continent in my 30s before the final departure. 
I mean, try before you buy, right?
I know that whenever I go, there will be a long list of things left undone, so I guess any time is as good/bad as any other time.
Here’s a quote I really enjoy 
:
"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, totally worn out and screaming, “WOO HOO what a ride!”
I want to get really old and decrepit, spending my final 20 years in a nursing home gibbering away like a mad thing to all the other (captive) residents. It’d be like a RL Messageboard…they wouldn’t be able to escape my witty and insightful conversations though.
I’ll insist that the kids and the grandkids come and visit me every week, and when they get here, I’ll have a sudden attack of dementia and forget who the fuck they are. It’d save me a heap on presents and stuff come birthdays and Xmas.
I’ll go travelling…into all the other rooms in the nursing home, especially those with handsome old blokes in them.
I cannot wait to get really old!!
Seriously, old is cool. Apart from when you’re a little kid, when the hell else are you allowed to get away with doing fun shit like that??
I’ll wear purple too of course.
I wanna see the start of the 22nd century. Hence, I gotta make it to 122. Any more years will be a welcome bonus, but the first 122 are non-negotiable.
Given my family history, I’ll probably either a) keel over of a heart attack in my sixties, or, b) linger on into my nineties, helpless and demented, in a nursing home.
Pass the donuts and fried chicken!
I plan to never die, frankly. I have other priorities.
What, you say I have to die someday? Well… all right. Let’s see. Towards the very end of two remarkable terms filled with accomplishments, I want to die quietly in my sleep, be carried out of the White House in a flag-draped coffin, have an elaborate state funeral and be mourned by the entire nation, leaving things in the capable hands of my adoring Vice President.
As to the OP, Dennis Miller once joked that The Who decided to revise the lyrics to “My Generation” before they went on their latest tour: “Hope I die before I get really really really really really really old…”
No. No, you really do not want to get old and demented in a nursing home. Trust me on this one. It is not cool.
That is so true…I am FAST approaching 40, will be giving birth 3 weeks after my 40th birthday, and never felt better (well, for the most part! )
I don’t know my family history, being adopted, so I have nothing to go by in terms of expectations of longevity. So I plan to live to be at least 90!
I’m confident the OP will change his/her mind as he/she gets older. Life’s funny like that.
I figure that around the time I turn 80 or my health starts going downhill (whichever comes first), I’ll start trying all the drugs I passed up in college because I was concerned about the long-term side-effects. I also plan on letting go of my tenuous grip on reality and going completely bonkers. Combine the two, and it should be a very interesting - and fast - downhill slide into the grave.
I can’t die any time soon… Have you seen how full my TiVo is?
realistically, if i continue the way I’m going, I may not last til thirty. or twenty.
but in the event that life turns around, I want to live to 105 just so I can be a totally awesome old lady like my grandmother. Only possibly awesomer.
I plan to take full advantage of my age and pretend to be senile, like, all the time. Then I can do all kinds of things that nobody but a little old lady would get away with. And if anybody asks, I’ll say, “I’m a hundred and five! I’ve earned my right to wear a ballgown to wal-mart!”
oh yes. I will be awesome. And my poor children and grandchildren will either be delightfully embarrassed or they’ll be awesome like me and able to laugh it. Either one would be fun.
That makes sense if cigarettes are your only pleasure. If not, you might want to stick around longer to enjoy the other ones.
It’d be good if I reached 81, the age when my grandmother died. If I survived to reach 70, when my mother died, that’d be okay, but I feel I still have a lot to do. At 43, I’d rather have 40 years more than just 30 or under. My father made it ‘til he was nearly 78, prostate cancer and all th’ rest, and another grandmother died around 84. I reckon I’ve got a good shot.
If I carked it in a library or museum, that’d be great. No plans to end up in retirement or rest homes. I’ll hopefully work (and continue to love what I do with a passion) until I drop. Looking forward to being that old bugger with a walking stick, sittin’ at community meetings, waiting to my chance to wave said stick in the air and misbehave. Just because I can.
Re the “quality vs. quantity” idea: why choose one or the other when you can easily have both? The older folks I know that have taken reasonable care of themselves have both a much longer expectation of additional life, and a much higher quality of life (both now and in the future) than if they’d let their health or fitness degrade.
The notion that sedentary obese alcoholic diabetic drug-abusing smokers have more fun is dubious, to say the least.
And the notion that those in their twenties should be planning their death is simply bizarre. Why not allow for the possibility that you’ll learn and change a bit in the next 20 years?
Good point. It seems to be a bit of wishful thinking that bad habits will just kill you earlier. It’s possible your life-span will be the same, just much less enjoyable at the end because of your crappy health.
“Smoking will kill me 10 years earlier” is a lot easier to handle than 'Smoking will put me on oxygen, unable to do ANYTHING fun for my final 10 years."
As long as I’m still physically active (not by nursing-home standards, by normal standards), I’ll be happy. As soon as that starts going, I’ll probably ditch the safety precautions and end up riding my bike off a cliff or something. I’ve seen 50-year-olds who can kick my ass, and I’ve seen people start withering away way too early.
Granted, the way my knees have been since I was a teenager, that’ll probably be sometime a decade or two from now.