Aging and My 70 Year Plan!

Haha! I hope my own family shells out $3,000 for my hilarious headstone! “Here Lies Grumpy” lol lol

If you’ve read my diatribe about dying and the heat death of the universe, then you already know how petrifying I find the end of my own existence, as well as all of existence in the entire universe for that matter. That subject is old hat! While this extremely nagging notion plagues my daily life to this moment and beyond, let’s take a step back from the “me dying” and the “universe dying” part of things. Let’s talk about aging instead. You know, the process that leads up to the “me dying” part of things. Whoops, there I go again!

Right now, I’m 35 years old. That means 5 years ago I was still trying to not look like a kidnapper while I carted my then one-year-old in a stroller. That means 10 years ago I was fumbling through my newest career trying not to get fired. That means 15 years ago I was in the middle of sleeping during physics classes during college. That means 20 years ago I was trying very hard to be invisible to every single person walking through the hallways of my high school. That means 25 years ago I was playing a hell of a lot of Crash Bandicoot and Pokémon Red. That means 30 years ago I was blissfully unaware that my parents allowed me to walk around in public with a mullet long after it was fashionable for even the trashiest of trailer park dwellers.

That means 35 years ago I was some drooling little blob. And, if I’m extremely lucky, 50 years from now I’ll also some drooling little blob. We come full circle on life, and it’s disconcerting. It’s one of life’s biggest jokes, the whole deterioration one undergoes physically and mentally as they ever so slowly creep up in age. You aren’t able to lift boxes anymore. Crossword puzzles become significantly harder. Friends and family find you annoying to be around. Liver spots. Stories about shopping at Home Depot. Posting comments on newspaper comic strip websites. Bones crumbling into so many piles of ugly dust.

Certainly, there are lifestyle choices to consider as you get older. You can’t eat four pounds of pie anymore like you could during your fond college pie eating contest days. You can’t run three marathons in one day anymore like you could after getting inspired by Forrest Gump back in 1993. You should cut back to two bottles of pure malt whiskey per night if you don’t want to succumb to pesky alcoholism. I personally don’t eat pie or run marathons or drink alcohol, so I’m already in tip-top shape and ready to take on aging with gusto! Here’s my 70-year plan!

Age 45

By the time I’m 45, I want to have had climbed the career ladder so high that I can kick God in the face. I hope to be making nine figures per year sitting at a mahogany-chrome desk practicing the Vulcan hand gesture. I want to come home to my lovely wife and my awful teenage children, who I will hide from deftly by taking the secret staircase down to the MAN CAVE (a 12′ x 8′ bathroom with a broken toilet and a handheld TV). My blog will be flourishing, getting upwards of fourteen hits per day from people who want to read about my theories on Batman’s incontinence.

By 45, I hope to be in excellent shape. I want to be able to lift bags of potatoes into the house so that I can finally feed my family. I want to be able to run 75 miles to the grocery store without so much as puffing. I want my pecs to be enormous and my glutes, too, to be enormous. I want to be able to lift my petulant 16-year-old child and dunk her head in the toilet repeatedly if she keeps bringing home B- grades. I want — no, need — to be able to beat up Charles Atlas. That’ll teach him to send out bodybuilding pamphlets. What do you mean he’s dead? That won’t stop me. I’ll beat up his bones.

Charles Atlas, I will kick your puny little dead butt.

Age 55

By the time I’m 55, I want to have had retired early after making billions inventing condoms that change colors depending upon the temperature of the dick and/or vagina. I want to be able to spend my summers vomiting from seasickness while on my 4,000ft yacht and laughing at all those who dare swim in my line of fire. I want to have also invented time travel, but I’ll keep that one to myself. I will want to go back in time and kill Ronald Reagan an infinite number of hilarious ways. I want to meet the guy who first swam the English Channel and slap him silly. I want to wrangle a dinosaur. I want to take a dump on Pangaea.

Age 65

Bored with retirement, I will have become a professional ice cream taste tester for Ben & Jerry’s. I will develop and approve new fantastic flavors such as “Benito Mousse-olini” and “Sex Dynamite”. I will win the Nobel Peace Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence with respect to my world renowned iced cream delights. Statues will have been erected in my image from Vilnius, Lithuania to Tam Điệp, Vietnam. People will respect me. Children will worship me. Babies will revere me. Dogs and cats will bow to my benevolence. All hamsters will have been executed under Decree S67-54 under TomWritesAboutStuff-ist law. Finally, I will have been triumphant in my war against hamsters.

Age 75

Bored with godhood, I’ll buy all the old Nintendo 3DS games that I never got around to playing and maybe finally finish Steven Erikson’s Malazan series, a task that will require 300 hours per day of free time and a three-mile long chart of characters and their titles, relationships, abilities, hobbies, and shoe sizes.

Age 85

Having given up on the Malazan series out of sheer frustration, I will have ordered my minions to dig up Steven Erikson’s bones so I can beat up his bones. Everyone’s bones will be dug up! I will punch everyone’s bones! It’s a good thing that, in the year 2073, arthritis and degenerative bone disease will be a thing of the past! Scientists will have had discovered a series of 47 shots that will render bones stronger and more resilient than titanium alloy. And not that commercially pure titanium alloy shit. My knuckle bones will be able to withstand punching other knuckle bones. I’ll be able to die a happy man.

Grandpa! You look terrible!

Age 95

Oh, we’re not done yet. I’ll still be alive in 2083 with barely any of my faculties left. My great-grandchildren will have shackled me to a wheelchair and towed my ass to an out-of-state nursing home from the back of their car. One car for 17 great-grandchildren.

Nursing homes in 2083 will be exactly the same as nursing homes in 2023, as they are currently exactly the same as nursing homes in 1910. The only difference is that Bingo will actually be Futuristic Bingo, which is exactly like Bingo except all the numbers will be painted on a boxful of rats. You get points for each rat that runs up your pant leg and burrows into your diaper.

I expect to be running the nursing home, using my wry wit and charm and my dementia-pickled brain to schmooze the staff into giving me as much Ben & Jerry’s ice cream as I want. Also, just fill my withered ears with plenty of Frank Zappa, Ghostface Killah and grindcore and I’ll be a happy, drooling old dingbat.

Gimme some of that nursing home pussy, too. That’s the good stuff.

Age 105

I’ll certainly be dead by 2093, but in the off chance that I’m hanging on by a frayed thread, I’m going to dictate a request to the nursing home staff to load me up with enough morphine to kill a herd of elephants and then crack me in the fucking head with a baseball bat.

Barring that, maybe by then they’ll have technology to transfer my consciousness to an indestructible robot so I can live an eternity of hell on Earth, scrambling madly for anything that will cause death. Anything at all would be bliss. Launch me into the center of the sun, for the love of God. I want to die. I just want to die!