When It Wears Out, Throw It Away

I recently stumbled across the historical life expectancy tables published by the National Center for Health Statistics. The life expectancy for a white male born in 1901 was 49 years. By 2002, a newborn white male’s life expectancy had increased to 77 years. And for each year the kid survives beyond birth, additional expectations are tacked on the back end. Is that fair? Even convicted felons get time off for good behavior!

The boneyard where I plant has been swallowing carcasses for about 150 years now. We still have handwritten burial records for residents who were born around the turn of the 20th century, and damned if a whole bunch of ‘em didn’t croak at right around 49 years of age, more or less. Most conspicuously, the handwritten records indicate that "consumption" was all the rage in choice of exit strategy. In the medical parlance of the mid-twentieth century, "consumption" was jargon for tuberculosis, and the term was descriptive of the symptoms that caused the body to waste away. The word "consumption" is also a lot less tongue-tying. Let’s hope there is no outbreak of tuberculosis during our current president’s term. He’d asphyxiate himself trying to pronounce that one.

Here’s my theory: I think 49 years is still the life expectancy. The NCHS tables are a ruse. If you don’t believe me, listen to 50-year-old white guys talking to one another. At 50, box scores and broads have taken a back seat to PSAs, cholesterol, blood pressure, knee ligaments and rotator cuffs. After 49 years, their warranties have clearly expired and they are leaking fluids and replacing parts.

And the corollary to that theory? We are still dying of "consumption." We spend 49 years accumulating a modicum of wealth, and the medical and pharmaceutical rackets spend the next three decades "consuming" it. The patient’s financial resources waste away as he gobbles synthetic pills and installs bionic parts to replace the original equipment. But make no mistake about it; the guy was dead at 49.

I am 49 years old. Seems about right for a life expectancy to me. I’m running out of shit to do. Hell, I’ve done some stuff twice.

Now that I have broken the story on the statistical life expectancy sham that has been perpetrated upon us, I am pulling the plug on all artificial attempts to re-engineer my 49 year old, lifeless form. My doctor doesn’t know it, but he has been fired. His eyes lit up when I turned 45, because his handy pocket guide said I was heading into the pre-season warm-up for the Rebuild, Replace and Resuscitate Games. I was going to be incurring more shop time at peak season rates. But now that I’ve had my sampling of fistings and blood-suckings, I am going to take my ball and go home. I win and I quit. I have beaten the odds according to the 1901 rules, and I choose not to adopt any subsequent rule changes.

What’s my PSA? Don’t know. Don’t care. What’s my blood pressure? Don’t know. Don’t care. What are my HDL and LDL cholesterol numbers? Don’t know. Don’t care. If my knee hurts, I’ll limp. If my shoulder hurts, I got another one. Keep your syringes, centrifuges, MRIs, CAT scans and mail-in fecal sample pouches away from me. Keep your fingers, scopes and cameras outta my ass. I’m a dead man walking, and I have no intention of fueling the spiraling inflation reflected in the NCHS life expectancy tables. I’m on borrowed time, and I will not pay interest on the loan.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m just going to wake up dead some day. My organs are free to follow independent plans to kill me, or they can hold meetings and plan a concerted effort to shut down all operations. It’s a suicide mission on their parts, because they are going down with me. With all original equipment intact. Parts may be worn and weathered, and some might be dragging behind me in a shower of sparks, but I got a few miles out of this body and the maintenance won’t eat me alive. It’ll just quit runnin’.

Just like the 1901 models.