Living Palindrome

Every time (like yesterday) that I fill out the year of my birth on the Customs Form, I think, "Whoah! 1951! That number feels like a long, long time ago!!" And it is! The new conversations amongst my peer group, after the ritual sharing of aches and pains, is “How did we get to be so old!” We’re all perpetually surprised, but why should we be? The price of living long is getting old. Ain’t no other way that I know of. But here I am, grabbing life by its tail and swinging it around with a "Yeehah!" even if I slightly pull my muscle on my rotator cuff while doing it!

While filling out the form on the plane, I had a moment of blanking on what year this is. 2015? How did that happen? Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were all so amazed about the year 2000— and afraid that computer failure would end the world? Then I looked at my birth year and this year and realized that as of this moment, I’m a living palindrome. 51-15. What does that mean?

Mostly it means that it’s 4:30 in the jet-lagged morning in a rainy Raleigh, North Carolina and since I can’t get back to sleep, I might as well think about strange little things like 51-15 and ponder the meaning of longevity. And make you, the reader, wonder whether you missed your living palindrome year and if your life was the poorer because of it. Just sayin’.