I am wearing my black t-shirt today, the last in a cluster of three such shirts manufactured decades ago by the Jockey underwear company and sold in economical tri-packs. Its size is medium, an honest medium, not one of those small/medium things which squeeze you in and make you feel sweaty all the time and not one of those large/mediums which can easily cover two people. My shirt is made mostly of cotton, which allows it to breathe, and partly of something else, which forbids it from shrinking. I would tell you what that something else is but the label printed on the inside of the shirt has disintegrated into an undecipherable language, the sad victim of brutal overwashing.
Truth be told, my shirt has seen better days. It has several small holes around the neck and a couple of larger ones under the arms, and Siobhan gets grumpy if I wear it out in public. But there are some mornings, and this is one, where no other shirt will do, where everything else is too hot or too cold, too large or too small or perhaps too fancy to sit in one’s writing chair contemplating the meaning of life and baseball. My shirt has character, developed over years of hard toil, wrestling with spirited horses, working in the fields, accompanying me on long, tedious road trips. It is the last of a dying breed, it’s brethren dispatched when their physical conditions became forlorn and indefensible, when the cumulative size of their holes, alas, finally exceeded that of the remaining fabric. R.I.P., little fellers.
In the interests of honest journalism, I have to report that there may have been times when I sneaked off to the local post office wearing my tattered buddy so he could visit with similar creatures sported by my aging neighbors, garments celebrating such events as The Arrival of the Hindenburg, the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair or The Construction of the Maginot Line. What’s a few loose threads among friends?
There may have been a time when I thought this downdressing an unpardonable fashion gaffe but that time is long past, relegated to the rusty dumpster containing the remains of the dinosaur, the Edsel, Nehru shirts and bellbottom jeans. I have come to recognize The Prerogatives of Age, one of which is that the Fashion Police are required to stop at the borders of Elderland, that blessed province inhabited by 70-year-olds and up who are now allowed to wear orange plaid golf shorts and 20-pound gold medallions all at the same time.
There are, of course, other benefits as well. In Elderland, you can pull out into ongoing traffic with only modest protests, a few complaining horns. It is unforgivably wretched manners for another motorist to shoot you. In Elderland, you can flirt with attractive young women without being thought a stalker; even Ed Frankenstein can get a hug. In Elderland, you can drop in at the doctor, no charge, to see about a wart or a bout of Bullous Pemphigoid. In Elderland, you can go up to a punk in a bar and threaten to cauliflower his ear without threat of retribution. Nobody wants to suffer the ignominy and just desserts meted out to an elder abuser. Ah yes, this is the life, this post-70 experience, just lie back and experience the bliss. Unfortunately, just when we become Golden Agers, that Gong Show celebrity judge with the timer runs in and takes it all away with one smack of the mallet. There oughta be a law. Or at least an escape hatch. Maybe there is.
What’s Next?
Last year, research fellow Dr. Xiao Dong and colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York made the celebrated claim that human lifespan would peak at 115 years, that a biological barrier would prevent longer lives. But a new study by biologists at McGill University in Canada argues that there is no evidence that maximum lifespan has that limitation, calling the Dong study flawed.
McGill professor Dr. Seigfried Hekimi stated: “Their claim rests on their identification of a plateau in the ages of maximum lifespan beginning around 1995 and close to 1997, which is the year that Jeanne Calment, a super-centenarian with the longest confirmed human lifespan on record, died at 122. In fact, by extending trend lines, we can show that maximum and average lifespans could continue to increase far into the foreseeable future.”
Hekimi illustrated that the average newborn male in 1841 England could expect to live 40 years. The average Brit born in 2011 could expect 79 years. Just six years later, that life expectancy has risen to 81 years. Hekimi says it is impossible to predict what future lifespans might be. Improvements in technology, medical inventions and living conditions could all push back the upper limit. “It’s hard to guess. Three hundred years ago, if you told people that one day humans might live to one hundred they would have called you crazy.”
Hekimi agrees that the average lifespan is one thing and the possible lifespan of non-smoking, non-drinking, healthy-eating exercisers is another. The more roadblocks removed from the path, the better, he says. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to be lucky.
What’s Luck Got To Do With It?
With apologies to Tina Turner, maybe a lot. The healthiest of humans, possessed of good sense and caution, can be struck down by an unlikely combination of events. Wishing to avoid the scary possibilities of modern airports, Mr. McCareful opts to ride the rails to visit his sister in the Golden West. Alas and alack, he chooses the exact day when Posse Comitatus decides to blow up The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Reggie the vegetarian, getting on in years, restricts his outside eating to health food restaurants, oblivious to the fact Jeffrey Dahmer has been hired for kitchen work and is inserting human ears into the tofuburgers. He contracts a raging case of Kuru Disease and shakes to death in no time. What’s going on here? How come some people win the lottery two or three times when most of us can’t get a single number? Is Luck real? How is that possible?
Story #1: Scientists assembled 40 people who considered themselves lucky and 40 who thought they were unlucky. Most of the “lucky” people were upbeat and smiled. One of the “unlucky” people broke a leg on his way to the lab.
The scientists gave each person a newspaper and said it contained a hidden message that would help them get rich if they found and reported it within two minutes. Each copy of the newspaper had a small headline printed on one of the backmost pages reading, “If you notice this, you just won $50.”
Most of the lucky people quickly ran through the pages and found the title in less than 30 seconds. Most of the unlucky ones carefully scanned the pages front to back until they ran out of time.
The scientists conducted many similar experiments and concluded that “luck” is the open mind that trusts its own unconscious to see the whole and attract attention to anything unusual. And the lack of luck is subjecting yourself to an artificial procedure and losing yourself in the details. In other words, Luck is seeing the forest behind the trees.
Story #2: When you are placing bets on a game like craps or roulette which is based on pure chance, it turns out that your betting shifts your odds. A person who wins two bets in a row has a 57% chance of winning the next one, whereas a person who has lost two bets in a row has only a 40% chance of winning the next. Why? A recent study of gambling asserts that participants expect that their bets will regress to the mean. If they’re winning, they expect they are more likely to lose next time, so they compensate by making safer bets each time, increasing their chances of continuing their streak. When people have been losing, they take riskier bets trying to catch up, which means they generally lose more. The actual event the gambler bets on doesn’t become any more or less probable, but past outcomes affect how the bettor funds the next opportunity.
Story #3: In a 2010 study on luck, researchers allowed one group of subjects to bring with them objects they considered to be their lucky charms while attempting to solve various anagram problems. A second group had no such help. The people with charms and other amulets persisted at problems longer because they felt more effective, as if they had the assistance of some unnamed power. Alcoholics Anonymous uses a similar logic to help people get sober and remain so. People feel empowered when they think someone is helping them, whether this is true or not, and they do better at the tasks at hand.
“Lucky” people are more relaxed and open, able to see all the opportunities available rather than just what they are looking for. A man goes into a bar, immediately notices Dolly Delightful, glamorous, vivacious, sexy. Far afield in a remote booth sits Margaret Mensa, merely attractive, quiet, brilliant. He opts for Dolly and is eventually disappointed. His friend is enchanted by Margaret, who becomes his partner for life. The first fellow shakes his head in wonderment. “Some folks have all the luck,” he opines. Oh, really?
Lucky people seem to generate good fortune by adhering to four principles. They are skilled at creating or noticing chance opportunities. They make their decisions by listening to their intuition. They create self-fulfilling prophesies by having positive expectations. They adopt a resilient attitude that transforms average luck into good.
Smarter Is Better
Okay, you’ve made it this far. Your genes are adequate, you’re eating healthy, get plenty of exercise, keep LSD use to a minimum and now you’ve learned how to be lucky. Any more secrets? Maybe one. Smarter is better.
Researchers from the London School of Economics developed a study comparing the genetics of fraternal twins with identical twins---being aware that fraternal twins only share half the DNA---enabling them to better understand the impact of genetics separate from variables like environment, home life, school and childhood nutrition. They found that the twin who was more intelligent tended to live longer and that this was especially true of fraternal twins.
“We know that children who score higher on IQ-type tests are prone to living longer,” said Rosalind Arden, research associate at the London School. But they’ve known this for a long time in the British Isles, after all. Surveys carried out across Scotland in the 1930s and 1940s recorded the IQ test scores of almost every 11-year-old in the country. A research team led by Catherine Calvin, a professor of psychology at Edinburgh University analyzed their eventual causes of death to determine if there was a correlation between childhood intelligence and lifespan.
She found one. After accounting for factors such as higher income, smoking, etc., Calvin found that childhood intelligence was inversely associated with all major causes of death.
Okay, got it? If you’re looking to go plowing past the century mark, it’s a good idea to bring along decent genes, a healthy lifestyle, few bad habits, good luck and a healthy dose of smarts. Although, come to think of it, genius-level intelligence may not be an absolute requirement. After all, Donald J. Trump made it to 70 just this year and nobody is accusing him of being the next Marnen Laibow-Koser. Or even the next Daffy Duck.
Let us know when you make it to 90. We’ll be putting together small parties for you and your peers. Very small parties, perhaps, but parties nonetheless. Of course, they’ll necessarily be of very short duration. Seems like everyone wants to get home early these days. Back into their comfortable black t-shirts.
That’s all, folks….
