Well, I turned 32 today. This is a bit disappointing, since I haven’t checked any of those silly, on-line death calculators in a while, and when I checked this one today, I found that I am actually going to die in the year 2036. Well, this obviously sucks, that means that I am going to die when I am 62 (possibly 61, someone should put out a line on the before/after my birthday on that), and thus my life is already more than halfway over. The last time I checked, I was going to die when I was 64, so this would be the halfway point right here. That’s what I get for not obsessing about my own death enough to check more frequently (on the upside, I could check other calculators to get more favorable numbers).
That is all moot anyway, since I am not going to live to be anything close to 62. See, I have had this recurring dream since I was in High School, in said dream, I see the date of my death, that date is December 17, 2007. Of course that seemed like it was an eternity away when I was 16, but now that I am 32 to the date seems a lot closer. The funny thing about the dream is that I actually die in it. Most people say that if you die in your dream, you die in real life. I am here to tell you that it isn’t true. I die in this dream (and have died in other dreams) every time, though the way I die is never the same.
The first time I had the dream, it was pretty straight-forward. I walked out onto the sidewalk in the middle of a city -a city with huge buildings, far taller than the buildings in any of the cities I have ever visited-, stopped at a small news stand to buy a paper -which is something I have never done, and I doubt that they even have news stands any more-, then got hit by a bus in the crosswalk. Which hurt really bad. In fact, it hurt so bad that I actually had chest pains when I woke up, which, rather oddly, didn’t actually happen until the next morning. I spent the remainder of that night dreaming that I was a ghost. If you get the chance, I highly recommend that you do that, it was a heck of a lot of fun to run around the streets as an apparition just fucking with people.
After that initial death dream, it has changed every single time, only the date remains the same. In every dream since then, someone around me knows that I have foreseen my own death, and knows that it happens on the 17th of December, 2007. The first such instance was when I dreamed that my Mother -ever the resourceful woman- decided that there was no way that I could get hit by a bus if I was enjoying a day at the beach. So I was spending the day at the beach ogling 15 year old asses (remember, I was dreaming this when I was in my early teens, I am not some kind of sicko. And even if I was, I probably wouldn’t tell you about it.), sunning myself, and, at length, learning how to use one of them boogie board things. Which all goes fabulously. In fact it was a great time. Unfortunately, we got in a car accident on the way back home, and I died. More fun was had dreaming with my spirit self.
Anyway, I have had a bunch of different dreams that involve many different ways of trying to keep me from getting killed on December 17, 2007, none of which ever work. Possibly the funniest one was when it was decided that the best way to keep me from getting killed was to bind me to my bed. Well that idea was sailing along smoothly right up until the point that the house caught fire and I burned alive. If only they had used ropes to bind me the fire might have burned me free, but my father insisted on using handcuffs to make sure that I wouldn’t escape. Then they just left me alone in the house. Surprisingly, the pain of being burned alive was a lot less intense than the pain from any of the other ways that I died. After the initial shock from the heat of the fire, your nerves kind of quit feeling the heat. The most painful way to die has been, by far, drowning. It doesn’t happen quickly at all, and the water entering my lungs didn’t feel cool and wet, it felt as though I was inhaling fire. And it literally took a couple of minutes after the first breath of water for my brain to decide that it was dead. All the while I was sucking in breaths of what might as well have been burning bricks for the way they felt to my body. Yeah, I don’t want to die that way, and I probably won’t since I am a pretty good swimmer.
I read somewhere, and a very long time ago, that men like to have a feeling of control, and that thinking that they know when they are going to die gives them the ultimate form of control. Now I am not sure if I actually believe that, but if it is true then I sure as hell would like to be able to bump the year of the death up a couple of decades. 33 years doesn’t seem like nearly as many as it did back when I was teenager. Unfortunately the date in the dreams remains the same, although the dreams are far less frequent now. The last one I had was probably about a year ago, and it actually involved being mauled to death by our dog. I outweigh the guy by a good 3:1, so I would think that I would be able to hold my own against him, but man does he ever have a powerful jaw -that much I have the scars to prove already-.
As for the current day, well, happy birthday to me, I guess. The wife gifted me a car stereo to replace one that has developed an attitude -stupid inanimate objects and their stupid smack talk!-, and my mother called. You can always count on your mom to call and rub it in, can’t you? But I spent the majority of the day helping my Father-in-law move furniture and rip some of the nastiest carpet I have ever seen in my life (for the smell, not the pattern or color) out of a mobile home. I managed to crack my head on a wall-mounted speaker in the process which left me with a nice lump on the noggin, as well as a slight concussion (at least I think so, it kind of feels like a disconnected feeling you get while on medication, only the only medicine I took was single dose whack the speaker with your head). Which is nice really, cause if I were to sing happy birthday to myself, I could kind of do it in rounds; My actual body singing it first, while my brain does the back-up.
Also, just to throw it out there. The fifth of this month marked the six month bi-anniversary (is that a word) of my quitting drinking. That means that I have not had a drink in six months. The last time that I made it a full six days without alcohol would have been more than a decade ago. The last time that I made it six months without alcohol would be, best guess, when I was 13 (possibly 12, that would be a close one to call).
So the good and the bad from last birthday to this one. Last year I was drinking an 18 pack of beer every day, this year I am not drinking. Last year I had a job, this year I am unemployed. Last year, I had exactly one more year left to live than I do now, this year, I have exactly one less year to live than I did last year. Last year I could salivate over 18 year old girls and only they though I was creepy, this year when I salivate over 18 year old girls everyone in the room thinks I am creepy -by next year even the creepy old guys will think I am creepy-. Last year I would have gotten spanked 31 times, this year I would get spanked 32 times -which I suppose would be a good thing if you were into that, but I’m not-. Also, I was able to cross “text chat with Wil Wheaton while playing poker” off of my “please God, before I die” list. Unfortunately, I have no such list, and I am not sure that would have been on it in the first place.
Well, I better get back to reading the internet. I really want to finish this thing before I die, and I only have a year and a few months left…