Reflections On a Half Century

Many sports, most notably baseball, have been taken over by analytics. While these statistical formulas have a track record of success, they also have created a game that is not as fun to watch, and often times downright boring. I think about this as I turn fifty today.

The average life expectancy for an American male born in the 1970s is 74.8 and normally that last decade or so is pretty rough for working-class men. People have made fun of the senior moments of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, without the recognition that most men their age are already dead, and if they’re alive, probably in a nursing home where there is a high likelihood they’re neglected, abused, and forgotten about. In terms of hockey, I’m now entering the third period, and of course this human life is always in sudden-death overtime.

I’ve been able to dodge many bullets (literally) in order to make it this far. Starting as a teenager I had many friends and classmates murdered in St. Louis. Many didn’t live to see their twentieth birthday. Guys like Larry and Demetrius Banks I went to school with, friends like “Snap” (Corrian Hardy), Larry Cole who I was in juvenile with, and little Matt Jackson who was hit by a stary bullet as an elementary school student. Other kinds of bullets came later. I made a foolish decision as a teenager which ultimately led me to a ill-informed way of looking at the world. Chasing this idealism mixed with bad theology and religious fanaticism, many friends of mine ended up serving very long prison sentences (and some are still locked up), and this could’ve easily been me as well. Now that I’ve survived a youthful St. Louis, only to have family members murdered while I was in my forties, and I’ve long since seen the stupidity of the worldview I adopted as a young man, there has been another killer in recent years. Several friends and schoolmates of mine have died after suffering from various health conditions over the past several years. This is the age where many of the common habits and lifestyles of the people I grew-up with are catching up to them (smoking, drug usage, heavy drinking, poor diets, lack of exercise, and stress). If you come from an affluent background, your peers probably look different, and you probably have younger kids, instead of being grandparents, and you’re probably in better health and have few classmates who’ve passed, but that isn’t a universal experience.

I say all this to say I’m thankful I’ve made it this far. There have been many close calls and near-death experiences over the years ranging from car accidents to murder attempts to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m also thankful to be relatively healthy, stable, employed, have my family, and having been able to make the best out of situations, and make lemonade. I come from a time and place where the life possibilities lined up for me were incredibly boring, lacking in adventure, and the sense of curiosity of those around me was zilch. Never venture far from St. Louis, become an alcoholic as a teenager and never look back, get a boring job with benefits, marry the first girl you knock up, never take a vacation more adventurous than the lake without a name, God-forbid you read a book after your schooling is complete, be fearful of other cultures and the rest of the world, and make a transition from a Labor Dem to the Trump Train. Normative in this process for my age-group has also been the abandonment of religion which has made individual lives and families much worse off. I’ve lived a life rooted in curiosity and the spirit of adventure and charted my own course. True enough, I often charted myself into massive icebergs, but that’s the risk.

Lessons and goals? My annual goal is to read one-hundred books a year at least (follow me on Goodreads or Fable) and take one big international trip (at least). The life goal is to have visited all fifty states and every continent (as I define them, which is 10, as I add Russia, the Indian subcontinent, and sub-Saharan Africa). There are other goals regarding health and family that prove to be more difficult.

How have I celebrated? The plan was to binge watch The Sopranos and The Wire beginning September 1st and then to add the films that have been most important to me in my life: the original Star Wars trilogy, the Spike Lee classics, A Bronx Tale, and the Lord of The Rings trilogy. I’m only on season 5 of my Sopranos rewatch now. Slacking! There is also steak (well done), cake (yellow with vanilla buttercream icing), Cardinals baseball, and treating myself to some boxing PPV purchases (Canelo-Berlanga and Joshua-Dubois).

Lessons? I registered to vote on my eighteenth birthday in order to cast my ballot for Bill Clinton. I never miss a vote and I won’t miss this year either. However, it’s my firm belief that America is in irreversible decline, due to a collapse of family, faith, and shared culture and civic values. The optimistic America of my childhood has vanished. No elected official is going to change that. The GOP has turned into a MAGA cult with a mix of racial politics, AI and crypto bros, conspiracy loons, and cultural (mostly nonobservant) Evangelicals. Dems have become the party that has turned its back on New Deal politics and towards nutty professors, nonprofit grifters, racial and gender theorists, the behaviors of Latter Day Rome, and as Pope John Paul II coined it, “a culture of death”. I’m not in love with anyone running for president; but one has proven to be a bad president already and a destabilizing force for society. His application needs to be in the “do not rehire” drawer. We just have to make responsible decisions, vote for the candidate who can do the least harm, and hope for an American rebirth at some point (which would almost certainly be driven be immigrants). Most importantly don’t mess with my upcoming social security and Medicaid!

Responsible decisions are crucial. Yesterday I thought of a kid I played JFL football with named Jeff. His dad was an assistant coach and kids thought he was kind of an asshole. We nicknamed the dad Satan. Jeff was kind of a nerdy kid. Not in the sense of being smart and a techie, but in the sense of being socially awkward and not seen as cool by other kids. He didn’t seem to have many friends. We lost touch and went to different high schools and then I saw his name in the newspaper one day. He’d been arrested for the rape and murder of a twelve-year girl named Che Sims along with three other guys. Awful crime. The ringleader of the group was in his late twenties. Jeff was only around fifteen when the crime was committed. I can’t help but to think Jeff was young and impressionable, finally found someone who wanted to be his friend and accept him, they started a little gang of sorts, and it ended in this terrible tragedy. He made a very bad decision and has been in prison since he was a teenager serving life without parole. I looked up his current mugshot on the Missouri DOC website and I see a middle-aged man who has never known adventure or the sweetness of life. Few will make decisions as bad as he did, but all of us will make bad decisions at some point, and many will have life-altering consequences. Choose wisely and this especially important when choosing husbands or wives, friends, jobs, and spiritual guides.