Belated and Unwelcome Surprise

Someone with whom I facebook (maybe capitalization of a word now a verb? You decide) shared a Douglas Adams quote the other day to spark a flash quote mob I suspect.

I shared one that I enjoy though not my favorite, which is this one: The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair. That it's true doesn't detract from its beauty. I'm not sure that has anything to do with this: I was surprised yesterday, going through my pay statement-all on line, of course; no more wages packet with large, worn bills and coins grown soft through years of use, all the while clutching my cap like some character in a Dickens novel to ask 'please sir, I want some more!'

Actually when I saw the statement I did very much want some-as my net earnings were down over seventy (American) dollars for two weeks. I complain bitterly about my salary which I am now starving on but once dreamed of making, but in truth, it's a more than fair wage and I am grateful to have it especially in these times. Imagine how much more grateful I'd be with the seventy dollars back in the check.

It wasn't a mystery or a comedy-but if you're an actuary, you may fined it amusing. I didn't but that's just because I was basically at ground zero for the joke. Near the end of last month, I celebrated a birthday-I, like you, have one every year but this time around it was my 60th birthday. I mention that before I tell you (though I was unable to find the clip anywhere) my favorite routine from Robert Klein (from Child of the 50's) was his explanation of life insurance as "someone says to you, 'I'll bet you ten dollars a month 'til you die that you don't die,' and you say 'okay!''"

Until my recent birthday my life insurance premiums for the last decade has been based on the mortality rates in a vast pool of humanity known as Guys Between 50 and 59. No more. Now that I'm a geezer I've discovered in addition to sweet, young and beautiful women seeing me as part of the landscape, I get a senior discount without asking and, tada!, my life insurance premium goes up 140%. Xxxx me to tears with a stick as we used to say in sunny Sondy.

I am aware of the irony that I am alive to complain so bitterly at the awfulness and unfairness of all of this and that I'm usually on the sender side of these exchanges rather than the recipient. I'm thinking I'm the youngest sixty year old man I know, or will ever know. I take a perverse pride in having outlived my father as if longevity were now an achievement (actually I'm hoping it is because I'm kinda light in that department) and am looking forward to my children crowing about the same thing. 

Except I also got a present earlier this week of an achingly beautiful new release by Loudon Wainwright, III, to whom in the early seventies, when bearded, I bore a stunning resemblance (not that I ever heard once him complain people told him he looked like me). The album is called 'Older than My Old Man Now' and features some marvelous funny, brutally true and also very sad, musical observations on his life and times, wonderfully arranged, lustily sung and meticulously performed. In C.       -bill kenny