Shut Up Time, I’m Not Listening To You Anymore

When I was a teen, I put a fat blade of grass between my fingers to try to do that whistle thing. Except when I inhaled, the grass flew down my throat and got stuck, blocking my airway. 

I couldn’t cough it out, nor could I breathe. I remember flailing and panicking, and right before everything went dark, by some miracle, a friend who realized what happened started pounding on my back. The grass came up, and I spit it out. Then I lay on the ground, my chest heaving as I gulped in as much wonderful oxygen as my lungs would hold.

I’ll never know if my body gagged the grass blade up on its own, or if my friend dislodged it, or if it was a combination of both. But I always remember that moment as the scariest I’ve ever experienced.

You would think that would have been a conscious-altering event and perhaps I would have learned a valuable life-changing lesson, and not fucked around for many years, made hundreds of bad choices and mostly frittered my life away. But no.

What I do know is that I thought I was going to die that day, and that moment has always been in the back of my mind.

I’m not one who ever dwelled on death, but now that I’m older, I feel more aware of it, and more aware of being at an age where I am prone to ailments that cause it - heart disease, strokes, cancer, dementia, and so on. Bill and I are reminded of that with every doctor visit and every refill of various medications, so there is a subtle shift in my thinking lately.

In my 20s, I loved flying in an airplane, speeding on the ground faster than possible. I loved that stomach-dropping sensation at takeoff, that second when the plane heaves itself into the sky. The amount of speed and effort it took made me feel both giddy and exhilarated, but I was also a tiny bit afraid of flying.

Flying in my 30s and 40s meant I had less of a “this is a great adventure!” attitude and more of a jaw-clenching, could-we-please-get-this-over-with-because-being-on-an-plane-with-a-young-child-or-bored-pre-teen-is-a-pain-in-the-ass.

Now, I’m almost 60. When I fly, I have an "I'm tired of worrying about this, so go ahead and crash into the ground and get it over with “ frame of mind.

I say this because air travel is a good example of how my attitude towards life has changed through the decades. My twenties were full of adventure, trying new things, and invincibility. My 30s and 40s were best described as exhaustion and exasperation from working full time and raising a family. And in my 50s, I slowly transformed into a grumbling towards acceptance mindset: It’s going to happen and you can’t do much about it, so live life to the fullest.

Those wrinkles around my eyes, the extra weight on my thighs, the people who don’t like me and gossip about me, the patch of dead grass on our front lawn, the laundry that’s been in the dryer for three days…none of that matters.

Wake up every morning, be grateful for what you have, exercise and feel your blood pumping, drink cocktails, laugh, wear age-inappropriate clothes, make mistakes and learn from them, find new friends, try something new and scary, accept people for who they are, do things that bring you joy, and avoid anything that makes you sad.

LIVE LIVE LIVE! And then LIVE some more.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Shut up, time. I’m not listening to you anymore.