Back in the swing of things

Wasn't I just writing about living long with equanimity? This should not be taken to mean that I shall refrain from skewering the stupidity that springs eternal (a phenomenon alluded to here). It's just too much fun.

Take for example a recent Powerball writeup in USA Today, "The Nation's Coloring Book." The article appeared due to the growing size of the jackpot, estimated at about $340 million. I'll gloss over the propriety of this government revenue source for now, for unlike most, at least in this case (1) participation is optional, and (2) there is an easily quantifiable probability of realizing tangible benefit in exchange for your money. What other government money-grabs offer these advantages?

No, what drew my attention was this part:

Mary Neubauer, spokeswoman for the Iowa Lottery, said hundreds of ticket buyers had played a set of numbers from the ABC drama "Lost," which featured a character who won $156 million by playing a string of digits obtained from a patient in a mental institution: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42.

This same phenomenon is written up in a dedicated article here, which adds:

According to a Wisconsin Lottery spokeswoman, more than 840 people selected those numbers across five states during last week's Powerball drawing, including 266 in New Hampshire alone.

Perhaps you can tell from my selective quotations where I'm heading, but these thoughts don't seem to occur to the article writers or the Powerball ticket purchasers. It's weird enough to plunk down a dollar on a one-in-146-million-chance of netting the nine-figure jackpot (less taxes). You can rationalize it as an entertainment expenditure or as an almost-break-even venture in the long run if the jackpot's high enough. Fine. But what I find sand-poundingly asinine is paying a dollar for the same 1 / 146,000,000th chance of winning just 0.12% of the jackpot. Why would you do that? Stupid!! Did these people think that nobody else in the entire country would play the numbers from the highly-rated, nationally broadcast prime-time television show? Did each one of these hundreds upon hundreds of people think that they were the only ones clever enough to play these numbers? Sheeesh!

If we could somehow get an address list of the people who used the "Lost" numbers for Powerball, we could sell that list at a steep premium to salesmen nationwide. Because these are the people you can hit with the craziest offers. Given the option to buy equal chances at $340 million or $400 thousand, they chose the four hundred thousand. It's like knowing beforehand that there's a donkey behind door number three, and going ahead and picking door three anyway.

Imagine for a moment what these rants will be like when I'm actually old....

Flat affect

I'm mired in some sort of annoying grieving phase over the untimely passing of my father, Jujj Sr. The days immediately following such a profound event don't offer much opportunity for reflection, as one is overwhelmed with decisionmaking, ceremonial activities, and the attention of relatives. Then you go back to work, but you're really busy there too because you're catching up, and everyone would like to have a few words with you besides. Nay, it takes some time for things to start to approach "normal" again, and that's when it really sinks in that yes -- it's normal -- but different.

I catch myself making mental notes along the lines of, "I should remember to tell dad about that." I had to remove dad from the list I had for Christmas ideas. That one hurt -- more so than trying to decide what to do with the birthday card I had bought for him a few days prior. It seems unreal that I can't just pick up the telephone and call him up. Actually, my sister stumbled into that strange predicament barely an hour after dad's death, when she was calling to get word to dad's colleagues. The place where he used to work still has an extended outgoing voice message in dad's voice at dad's old extension, and that's the connection my sister got that morning.

The merely "annoying" grief arises when I do fun stuff that gets retroactively draped in melancholia. Last night my wife and I went to see the Wallace & Gromit feature film. I thought it was marvelous but at the same time I was thinking "Dad would really go for this film," and so it was a little sad too. Will the intensity of these moods slacken with time? Sure, but I suspect what will help more than time will be all those happenings and circumstances that dad could do without. Like snow. How that man despised Wisconsin winters! When I see the first flake, I will smile that dad needn't concern himself again with coats, shovels, sleet and slush.

I have a theory about an intangible that drags some people down as the decades wear on, and it's related to the concept of "normal, but different." When our lives change for the better, it usually happens so gradually that we don't take notice of it, or we discount the significance because we expected it. Negative developments on the other hand often seem sudden and capricious, and are recalled from memory more readily because of that. So if you're not careful while looking back through a prism of forty, fifty, or sixty years, you can trick yourself into thinking that the best of times were all way far in the past, and everything since has been a series of stairsteps down. Plan on living long? Best to remember that "normal, but different" doesn't always have to be a negative, and that building the positives in your life may lack drama but is essential nonetheless.

I intend to live out the senior years that my father was denied. My great-to-the-sixth grandaddy lived to be ninety-nine without aid of great wealth or medicine. Surely in this century that's not an unreasonable target to shoot for? That so much of what I now know will change or disappear, I will take in stride. I shall watch the stars slide past one another with my own eyes. And through it all I will remember.