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.
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.