Numbers

I’m oddly superstitious, by which I mean I’m superstitious about odd things, like red cars, green motorcycles, and numbers. I have favorite numbers: 7, 23, and 57. No real mystery, I was born on 7/23/57.

So this year, I was 57, and two days ago I turned 58 and it feels like what I just finished? That was my last great year. There are no more good numbers.

I got to be 23. I got to be 57. I’m never going to see 723, so what is there? There is me turning 58 and I have real hate-hate relationship with 8s. First of all, eight is an even number, which, unlike most of the world, I don’t like. They’re doubly bad because they’re symmetrical. And being 58 means I’m practically 60. I’m this close to being a sexagenarian, and I’m pretty sure there will be less sex happening when I convert to sexagenarianism, than there were veggies when I converted to vegetarianism

I worked for a woman who used to say that nothing was a big deal unless it resulted in bringing a baby into the world. That was the kind of thing you couldn’t take back, that everything else was re-doable. You could get married, divorced, then married again. Buy a house. Sell a house. Everything had a do-over.

I amended that to:  if no one died, no one was born, and no one sold a baby into porn, it’s not that big a deal. Giving a life or taking life, those are the deal breakers. Everything else is re-doable.

Except it’s not. Time. There is no do-over. I’m practically 60 and while I don’t regret anything I’ve done, I do regret things I haven’t done. I regret wasting time, because there isn’t a do-over, and I can’t go back and study veterinary science ten years ago. I can only do it now, which means I’d actually be 60 by the time I was able to be certified as even a vet tech––a highly underpaid job that would make me extremely happy and which I would have a helluva a time finding work as since it involves lifting heavy things like Great Danes and St. Bernards.

I’m not loving the numbers. I know I have a good thirty years ahead of me, if not more. But, still, there are a lot of sixes and eights in there.

2 Replies

  • Happy Belated Birthday! Mine is two days and six years before yours (don’t add those two numbers together, even though you probably wouldn’t have done so if I hadn’t brought it up. Oops! Oh, well. It was fun “interviewing” you.

  • Happy Birthday! I like the do over and not able to do over rule, but you are right there is no do over to get time back. I wish there was. I would like a time machine to go back to a choice or two and do them over.

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