Not a feisty, sitcom 100, like Mr. Burns; but a realistic 100? This is what your life would almost certainly be like:
• You’d have some, but not all, of your marbles.
• Your vision and hearing would be severely impaired.
• Your mobility would be just about nil.
• Your friends and family would be long-dead.
• You’d live in a nursing home or hospital.
So how’s about it, folks? Me, I figure I can afford to live till about 60, by my latest calculations. Lucky for me, I take after dad’s side of the family, and that’s about how long I’ll probably last, anyway . . .
Well, no, not like that. I’d rather pass peacefully if I got that infirm.
I would like to live to 100, actually to 112 so I could see the US Tricentennial. I’d also like to be an old fart who starts stories like, “When I was your age, we had wood-burning computers.”
What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.
The weird thing is that in my family, destruction is a positive. My grandfather who smoked a carton a day and drank Johnny Walker like water lived to be 89. My grandfather who was fit and healthy only lived to be 65.
I feel I’ve experienced a lot of things in my life and if I died tomorrow, I would have no regrets. Seriously, it’s been a full life. No nursing home for me, thanks. I think 50 is a good, ripe number.
You know what has made me think, though? This friend of mine is suffering from Hodgkins disease and has a 35% chance of living through this year. He’s only 23, and continues his life as though it couln’t possibly end. (He’s going to school, etc., totally normal routines) If I was him, I’d be travelling the world and fucking shit up.
All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. Stephen Wright
Oh, I don’t know. Noah sure seemed pretty spry for a guy who hadn’t seen 100 in half a millennium. Show me a man today half that age who could build a boat that big (never mind the problem of identifying and finding some “gopher” wood.)
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always wanted to live to be at least 109 years old. That way I’ll see the tricentennial of the good ol’ US of A.
The sad thing is that even if I do live to be that old, I probably won’t know it’s the tricentennial, much less my own name. Also senility, alcoholism, arthritis, high blood pressure and emphysema are all in my family.
50, for me, is only 19 years away! Way too young. My parents both say that their lives didn’t start until they were in their fifties and retired.
Count me in for the tricentennial.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
Okay, I’ll avoid the temptation to make a crack like “Well, Eve, that gives you about three more years” and the re-iteration of the famous line from the Bowery bum, “I wasn’t expecting to LIVE this long!”
I’ve always figured on a massive heart attack carrying me away somewhere in my mid-sixties *, just in time for retirement. I hope to be having sex with a 21-year old lady at the time.
Ike, if you’re having sex with a 21-year-old in your sixties, you’re much more apt to die from a massive head wound administed by your wife.
But hey—keep up with the steaks and ciggies, and the participation of said spouse and chippie will not be required, dear heart! " . . . About three more years," indeed!
Arnie, do you really expect your grandkids to give a good goddam about your 100-year-old self and visit you in the nursing home and listen to your endless stories about how you remember President Blaine Trump when she was just a socialite? Hah! You’ll be lucky to see the little shavers on your birthday.
I agree, Sax, 50 is a good ripe number - in my case it WAS a good ripe number.
Sounds like a bunch of you younger folks think that life begins to ebb at 40. Unless you have health issues, you’d better think again. Strange but true, there are a number of things that keep getting better at least until age 57 which I am now. Ask me again in 5 or 10 years.
I used to think that I wanted to live to be 100. Now I don’t care whether I do or not. If my mental capacities go, then by definition, I won’t know it. I’m determined not to be a burden on my kids, but I’m not sure just how I’ll make sure to avoid that.
So far, health has been on my side - the cancer thing was 6 years ago now.
It’s not a matter of age, but of ability. In a nursing home with at least some of my marbles? Could be worse.
Isn’t it the same question as whether size matters? It’s not what you’ve got it’s what you do with it.
“The labors…are aided by…innumerable lecturers, who diffuse such a various profundity in all subjects of human or celestial science, that any man may acquire an omnigenous erudition without the trouble of ever learning to read.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Celestial Railroad
My father will be ninety in June of this year. I wish my mental acuity was as good as his and I am “only” sixty. He says he doesn’t care if he lives any longer, but my bet is that he will make 100 and without most of the anticipated problems.
As to who wants to live that long, as George Burns once said, “anyone who is ninety-nine.”
You better believe that my grandkids will come and visit me every week! Otherwise the millions I’ve amassed will go to Father Flanagan’s boys. Bwahahaha!
Feh, wimps all of you, I don’t plan on ever dieing until I’m at least 10,000. I’ll load my brain up onto a computer, I’ll clone myself, hell, in the next fifty years I expect to see the ability to have my body rebuilt as a 20 yr old version of myself. Me, I’ll go when I am good and ready.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
I want to live until at least a hundred. And I may have a shot; we’re a long lived family on both sides (I wouldn’t be the first to hit triple digits). And while I confidently expect medical advances to eliminate most of the problems of aging, I’ll take it even if it was under the current state of the medical arts. My belief is old age may not be the best thing going, but it beats the alternative.