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How'd I live this long?
I don't exercise as much as I should. My diet could be better. I don't take a multi-vitamin. I don't get enough sleep. I drink brown liquor. I drive too fast. I drive too agressively. I drink too much coffee. I drink too much water (yep that's what I hear). I eat too many sweets.
I'm reminded of these details on a fairly regular basis.
But I'm the poster child of longevity compared to when I was a kid.
Car: I never knew the joys of a child safety seat. My car seat was the space between the dashboard and the windshield. When my family would take a trip, my spot was literally on the dashboard. One slammed brake, and I would've been a hood ornament.
I saw the seatbelts in my folks station wagon maybe three times, and that was only when my dad was washing the car. The belts would be lost under the seat, stuck to the floorboard, covered in grape sucker goo and hair.
Diet: Honeybuns! I ate freakin' honeybuns for breakfast. Every morning my mom would lob a honeybun, packaging and all, into the oven. If she was running late, I was screwed because the honeybun would overcook causing the plastic wrapping and the bun to become one. "Milkshakes" were another high point in my health food ritual. I was an incredibly skinny kid. As a way to help me "hunk up", my mom would make me these milkshakes that would make a healthy person's heart clog up and pop. Ice cream, whole milk, bananas, raw eggs, peanut butter, chocolate syrup, sugar, cinnamon, occasionally cookies, all blended together into this sickly sweet, yellowish-gray mud paste.
I would drink at least one a day, never gained an ounce.
Play: Bike helmets? Elbow and knee pads for skateboarders? Yeah right. I would've gotten my ass so kicked.
Our play centered around death, and the cheating of.
Once my brother and I made a diving bell out of a five gallon drum and an old air compressor my dad had in his shop. I stayed underwater using that bell for over 30 minutes, and coughed up stale air compressor oil for a month.
Then there was the time when we played BB-gun chase. We had to quit when one of the neighbor kids got a pellet lodged in his neck.
Also I found out that seeing if I could make it from my treehouse to the next tree in a single bound was not a good idea. Squirrels made it look so easy.
Passions: I was a maker of stuff. Stuff that would go "boom". Tennis ball cannons, homemade solid-fuel rocket engines, 50,000 volt transformers. Once I made confetti-b*mbs out of shotgun shells. I was later instructed by an officer of the Shreveport Police Department that that could get me hurt, even killed, or a the very least into a lot of trouble. I was never invited back to stay with my aunt after that little incident.
And to think all I have to worry about now is drinking too much water. In that case, I can coast until I'm in my eighties.
You know, a plasticized honeybun sure would be awesome right about now.
4/26/2005 11:08:00 PM
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