Fifty-five today. Three score and ten are the years of man, according to the psalmist--"four score if his strength holds." As if everyone is guaranteed seventy! Unless my strength holds, I won't even see my youngest out of high school. For some reason, this happy thought reminds me of some of the repartee in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises:
Robert Cohn: Listen, Jake. [He leans forward on the bar.] Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?
Jake Barnes: Yes, every once in a while.
Robert: Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we'll be dead?
Jake: What the hell, Robert. What the hell.
Hemingway's gifts as a comic writer have perhaps been under appreciated. Sun Also Rises includes this retort to the question, "How'd you go bankrupt, Mike?" At first, gradually. Then, toward the end, all of a sudden.
