Recently, I was cleaning out some of my old stuff from my parents’ garage and found a lot of my old childhood books. Several of these were important in my late childhood and “tween” years, so I kept them for Erik. One is The Fallen Spaceman, whose protagonist is coincidentally named Erik; I would have saved it anyway because I have very warm memories of that book. The collection also includes my Choose Your Own Adventure books, a find that got me to wondering: have I always been a roleplayer, even before that fateful day when I first discovered Dungeons & Dragons? And perhaps more importantly, is my son doomed to be a geek?
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I may have turned 31 this year, but according to an article on CNN.com today, I’m actually getting younger:
On a global scale, three out of five consumers believed the 40’s are the new 30’s.
“Our 40’s are being celebrated as the decade where we can be comfortable and confident in both personal and financial terms. The majority of global consumers really believe life starts at 40,” AC Nielsen Europe President and CEO Frank Martell said.
This should come as good news to my wife, who feels like we’re behind the curve since a lot of our friends are homeowners but we’re not. The only problem is that now matter how you view life, a woman’s biological clock keeps time in a absolute senseâ€â€past a certain age, risks for some birth defects start to skyrocket and fertility drops off.
The other interesting fact from the article is that 33% of Irish would consider cosmetic surgery to maintain their looks versus only 25% of Americans.
I was driving around on empty this week. Somehow that got me to thinking about the diesel car that Wesley had in high school, Old Smokey. Man, we had some good times in that car and its successor, Old Yeller. So then I started trying to remember what I did during my summers in high school. I have pretty clear memories of each of summers during college, but not so much high school. I didn’t work. I went to band camp a couple of times (yes, I’m that big of a geek). But the summer between my junior and senior years in particular is a big blank, which leads me to one inescapable conclusion: I did jack shit.
Here’s the thing, though: we’re all, like, grown up now. Wesley is, like, a doctor. But not just any old doctor. No, he’s a fancy MD/PhD kind of doctor. Who’s married. To a lawyer. And owns a house. And has a kid.
What the hell? When did that happen? I guess sometime in the last 14 or so years.
Speaking of 14 years ago and memorable summers in high school, the summer of 92 shall live in infamy. Not only did it have a pretty profound effect on my life for, like, 10 years, it was also the summer I stole my dad’s car. Good times.
I'm amazed at how the brain works. For instance, there's a word that I've been trying to remember for the better part of a year. I'll want to use it in a conversation, because it perfectly captures what I want to say, but I can't, because I can never remember it. This word means “that which is directly observed” and is frequently used in high school discussions of the scientific method (which makes this problem all the more embarassing). I've actually come across it once or twice in this quest, but I can't seem to hang on to it. I keep thinking it is or is similar to “epistemological” because the first sound is the same and they both have to do with knowledge.
How can I know that? How can I know what a word means and what it sounds like but not know the word itself? It's really quite amazing.
I looked the word up before I started writing this, but now I've forgotten it again. Which leads me to my real conclusion: I'm just getting old.
That word, by the way, is “empirical.”
