Never Mind

While it won’t be confirmed until the species is extinct, there is a rampant rumor that Wild Bill, his readers, and all of the other homo-sapiens are going to die. This regrettable, unproven, yet persistent hypothesis has been circulating for some time, but journalists - health journalists - and the biomedical industry are working feverishly to put an end to the canard.

Wild Bill, like many well past the age of Medicare entitlement, has with the passage of time come to consider the possible impact of the axiom, much like the fabled condemned man climbing the gallows steps is thought to be able to focus on his short term prospects. Over the years, Bill, like so many Americans, has obsessed on how to postpone the need for such consideration to a more opportune time.

Bill jogged for years and now walks to the point of breathing like a sex obsessed teenager. He gets seven hours of sleep and stretches his aging connective tissue semi regularly. He supplements a halfway decent diet with multiple vitamins and a heavy dose of vitamin C, and… Well, you get the picture; Bill is doing his damnedest to make a liar of those who insist he’s mortal.

Among the health habits picked up over the years is an inability to ignore all of the health information in every newspaper and magazine that comes to his attention. For instance, each Tuesday, Bill reads the Health Section of the Washington Post line by line and article by article. In recent months, Bill’s natural skepticism of everything except longevity education has crept even into the area of vital statistics.

Can you imagine that low fat foods really don’t do much for your long term prospects? And after eating all that high priced cardboard for decades, can you believe it? Glucosamine, which has been working wonders on the aching joints of Bill’s life partner, turns out to be but a placebo. Running your buns off for twenty miles a week is now shown to be not a lot better for your heart than walking thirty minutes several days a week, and it’s a lot tougher on the knees. And on and on it goes.

But today’s Health Section in the Post put an end to all that obsessing. There is an article – rather a book review or analysis – that shows the way to live to be a hundred years old. It’s not the first such book and article to cover this ground, and there was nothing new in it, but it is the last such piece that will focus the mind of Bill.

The bottom line – really there are fifty bottom lines - for increasing the odds of surviving past the century mark includes: eating your veggies, fruits and nuts, stay away from eating too many cows – especially overweight ones, don’t you dare go back to the fridge for another cold one, and remember what happened to the Marlboro Man. With the exception of resisting return trips to the cooler, so far it’s not too onerous.

But then the going gets tough. Bill must move from one of the world’s nuclear bulls’ eyes, Washington, DC, stop his worrisome and aggravated blogging about the incompetence of George W. Bush, and move to a tranquil non-strategic Greek isle fishing village and take up dancing and martial arts.

Maybe all this all still works for you, but for Bill as Rosanne Rosanna Danna would say, “Never mind.”

Blog on!

Wild Bill