I don’t intend to live long. 

There’s an old joke, “What’s the best way to make God laugh?  Make a plan.”  I doubt that I will be lucky enough to be blessed with a timely demise.  Not that I really have a strong suicidal urge (not compared to the next seriously depressed person).  I simply don’t like the idea of being old and infirmed, embarrassingly relying on my loved ones to take care of me while I slowly lose my physical and mental faculties.

The reason for this semi-self-destructive diatribe is that I believe I suffered what could be a classic mid-life crisis at the age of 18.  I had been accepted to college and was preparing to go there in September.  But that summer, I decided to dip my toes into the craziness and try to revive my long slumbering barbaric yawp.

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I peaked in sixth grade.  More precisely, I peaked athletically in the summer following sixth grade.  Well, perhaps peaked is the wrong word, as it implies that there was a steady improvement in my skill set.  Let’s just say that my athletic skills inexplicably spiked in the summer following sixth grade.

As previously mentioned, sports are not my strong suit.  My asthma put the kibosh on most running activities, relegating me to the role of embarrassed spectator in many a gym class.  My coordination wasn’t really evident—appearing less like a controlled movement of an athlete than the controlled spasms of an epileptic whenever any ball came my way. 

That's not even close to me...I never wore glasses! (From The Decemberists' album, "Picaresque)

My skills were non-existent and I was immediately branded as an outsider to the majority of my fellow male classmates.  I became an “indoor kid,” the kind that gets cheered for just finishing the race in a way that was meant to boost self esteem but really just highlighted my pathetic nature to the predators in my class.

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