I would like to say I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to continue, but I can't raise one eyebrow. Both of mine always go up, and the only thing that will change that is a stroke, which I hope to avoid. [I would also like to say I quoted him accurately, but I'm sure I have merely reported the sense of what he said.] So I waited.
"What will this country look like in fifty years?"
"I'll be dead in fifty years," I said.
Jerome looked surprised, but he is hovering around thirty and hasn't thought that far ahead.
I expect to be dead in twenty years, twenty-five at the most. Both of my parents died by the time they were 85. And I don't expect to live longer than they did even though two of my father's siblings managed to live into their 100's and my Great-Aunt Lyda was 99. Both of my parents abused their bodies with cigarettes, and that is no doubt a factor.
My dad's prostate cancer remained dormant for close to twenty years before it exploded all over his body and killed him. My mother gradually faded. It got to the point that she didn't know who I was. Once, only after she made a comment on how blue my eyes are did she have the sudden realization she was talking to me. I could see the embarrassment in her eyes.
I am not upset about dying in my eighties. Earlier this year, after the stock market did its thing, I expected to be living in a nursing home on welfare in my twilight years.
I watched some of the Alzheimer's Project on HBO this summer and it terrified me. Not that I plan to have Alzheimer's, but that I couldn't answer some of the standard questions they ask people to determine how vague they have become. What is the date today? is the question that scares me most. I know it's Thursday if I go to art class, and I know it's Friday if I have breakfast with my grandkids' dad, and I know it's Sunday when I go to church. The other days of the week frequently escape me because they aren't important.
And the date? I indulge my superstitions and try to remember to say "Rabbit, Rabbit" first thing on the first of every month to have good luck [and probably fertility, which at my age I do not want] for the rest of the month. And I like to check my bank account on line to see if my pension was deposited then, too.
But I don't need to know the date for another 28 (29 in leap year), 30 or 31 days depending on the month.
I am not allowed to write checks, so I don't have to keep track of the year. I do have my own allowance account, but I mostly use the ATM, and I don't write things down in a check register because . . . I don't like to. I don't have a check register. I never wrote them down, which is why I'm not allowed to write checks. If something happens to Ann, I'll have to hire an accountant to keep my bills paid. And I can do that without guilt.
But Jerome's question still floats in the ether. What will the United States be like in 50 years? The answer is we really don't know.
When I was in junior high - middle school now, for no apparent - reason about 1955, the Scholastic Company or My Weekly Reader had a contest in which we were asked to predict what the world would be like at the turn of the century. Students in my class suggested giant greenhouses over cities to keep the climate stable and comfortable. They suggested jet packs and airplanes in every home for travel.
Not one of them suggested individual, multiple computers. Nor the end of petroleum. And not one of them suggested that as we age, we don't change much, we merely intensify.
And that's happened to our country, it seems to me. We haven't changed much. We had a long period of affluence greater than when I was a child. We expanded the number of homes, the number of cars, our standard of living in general.
But most of us still live in houses just like I did when I was a kid. We worry about how high the utility bills are going to be, just as my parents and grandparents did then.
And we wonder how long we will survive into old age.
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