Student contemplates age, life on 60th birthday

Today is November 3, 2011. My birthday. I’m 60 years old. Six- Zero.

By Dan Ramirez, December 2011 Staff Writer

I wake up ready to battle thicker tufts of wild hairs in my nose, ears and eyebrows. Am I grayer? Did I lose any hair? My skin is dryer, but that could be the cooler weather. My eyes occasionally drain from the outside corners for no good reason. I have trouble hearing in crowded, noisy rooms. I drive more slowerly. Alzheimer’s runs in my mothers’ family. My father died at 51. I wear bifocals. People look at me strangely when I tell them I have five cats. (Don’t they know that it takes six or more cats to qualify you as the “Crazy Cat Man”?) Those quirky characteristics I used to notice in old people, I now look in the mirror and see.

I woke up this morning, realizing that I have lived the majority of my life.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Mexican American men born in the U.S. in the early 1950s have a life expectancy of 65. Five more years.  Almost 30 percent of us will die between 62 and 65 from heart related causes and another 12 percent from respiratory issues. With those odds, I may not see my daughter graduate from high school in 2015.  And, according to the mail I’ve recently started receiving, I should be making “arrangements.”

I find myself more frequently saying, “I remember,” rather than “I look forward…”

The past can be so certain and selectively warm, not foreshortened, unknowing and scary like the future. (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”)

I remember when “Luddite” referred to textile factory protesters, not people who resisted adopting the Internet or smart phones. I remember when words were not proceeded with an “I” or an “E” or “cyber” to denote progress (e-commerce, iPhone, cyber-terrorism). I remember the business world before the Internet. I had a secretary. I knew DOS. I was cellular user number three with LA Cellular. I’ve been witness to 60 years of amazing social, political and technological change. Profound events have occurred during that time.

My biggest regret as I look to the end of my life is that I will miss the future. In the 1950s the futurists predicted flying cars, robots as servants and loads of leisure time for the 21st century. They did not foresee HIV, global warming, an emerging Orient, (Japan in the 80s, China and south Asia now,) the prohibitive cost of energy and space travel, nor cheap and ubiquitous computing and communication networks. What will the future bring? Food wars? Water wars? Cyber wars? Or solar powered seawater desalinization to reclaim the Sahara desert as the African breadbasket? How about capturing a mineral rich asteroid or water-laden comet and parking it in Earth’s orbit to be mined? Or what?

My wish is to die curious.

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