Everybody dies

Last week I said good bye to what has made up 1/3 of my work personality, Dr. Gregory House. I tell people my job is 1/3 parts each Dr. House, Winston Wolfe (Pulp Fiction) and Radar O' Reilly (M*A*S*H).

Considering what was happening with the show, I was anticipating the show would end with House's death but after hearing the episode title is "Everybody Dies" (a takeoff of a common phrase from the show "Everybody Lies") I realized that he was not going to die. I was satisfied with the show's conclusion including how things ended up in Princeton Plainsborough Hospital..

On December 31, 1999, I had a belief that my life was exactly half over at midnight Jan 1, 2000. Since I was born @ 5:28 AM on November 13, 1965, I figured out that 6:32 PM February 17, 2034 is when I will expire. (I did adjust to Feb 17 allowing for one more leap day after Jan 1, 2000 than before.)

Not to my surprise, I usually get very confused replies and looks upon revealing this information. This is not the first time I had this type of feeling.

For a long time when I was a kid, I had the belief I would not make it to 25. The Saturday before my 25th birthday, I was at work at 619 S. Wabash in downtown Chicago. As with most Saturdays there, it involved restocking our first floor picking area with merchandise stored on the 2nd floor. Believing this was possibly going to be my last Saturday night on earth, I wanted to get done quickly so I could leave early.

Being ahead of pace, I was able to take my lunch about 20 minutes earlier than normal. As I often did, I walked a block north for food and brought it back to eat. While waiting for the last minutes of my lunch, I heard a large rumble outside. On the 15th floor of the parking garage next door, someone backed a car into the wall sending bricks to the pavement on the path I walk to get lunch. Had I taken my lunch at my normal Saturday time, I easily could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and quite possibly killed.

Having cheated fate, I knew I was going to survive but had no idea what to do next since I figured why worry past that date? To be honest, my decision to not consider anything past that date definitely put me behind the learning curve for many social things and one I am still behind up decades later.

It is possible that in less than 22 years, I will cheat fate again. No matter what, I am not going to do anything deliberate to make my belief come true. If I survive that day, I will just as I did in 1990 continue to live.