One More Year to Go.....

Yesterday was my birthday, the last one before I become eligible for the senior citizen discounts at all the stores and theaters in town. Last week I took my sweetie (who is older than me by 3 months) to Taco Bueno for lunch. The youngster behind the counter gave us the senior citizen discounts without even checking my ID. He said he figured Sheila wasn't eligible yet, but he was pretty sure I was eligible enough for the both of us.

As that famous philosopher Indiana Jones once said, "It's not the age, it's the mileage!"

In a way, I'm looking forward to the special treatment I'll get for being "hoary with age". How cool is it that they'll knock a few bucks off my lunch just because I outlived my old man by a couple of years.

Of course, Dad didn't die of natural causes. A lot of the men in the King ancestry died hard and young. Great Great grandpa Thomas Archibald King got kicked in the head by a mule and died at age 49. Great Grandpa Joe Henry King pined away in a sanitarium scarcely a year after Great Grandma Doney died suddenly. He was 51. Grandpa Thomas Adolph King was 79 and he died of heart failure- the first male King in 80 years to die of natural causes. My dad, Adolph Wilmot King died at 52 of a shotgun blast at close range delivered by my step mother. My brother died at 16 of a shotgun blast at close range delivered by a friend who claimed it was an accident. So far, I'm running second in the longevity race.

I plan to live to be ancient and decrepit, but I'm told I need to lose about 60 or 70 pounds if I want to do that. I'm going to take a shot at it again. I lost 40 pounds last time I got serious. I'm going to eat only two meals a day and do a lot of walking to see if I can pull it off. This time I think I'll do it a little more slowly so I can keep it off.

I do have some good genes on other sides of my family. Grandpa Bell lived well into his 90's. My grandmothers both lived into their 90's. My grandmother King's dad lived into his 90's. There were a lot of really old folks in my family, so I figure I've got a fighting chance of living till Jesus shows up, especially if we elect any one of the three candidates we've got running for president of the U.S..

I just want to get my bunker built before it gets too rough. I'm calling it an "Earth House", but it's going to be a bunker complete with a moonshine still for fuel, a windmill and a generator, a serious garden and enough musical instruments to entertain myself when the TV goes off the air and that little target deal with the Indian comes on the TV screen to tell me I can find out what's going on by tuning to something called the Emergency Broadcast System.

I'm just going to wait on the porch and duck inside when the bright flashes start going off over toward Shreveport and Dallas.

I'll probably bring in the cat, but not if she's going to keep clawing up the furniture....

It's late. I'm tired and I'm job hunting. I should think about what I'm writing before I start typing.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom