Satisfied with the Ratio

This is the last day of the year. People everywhere, who do not care whether or not they miss the winter solstice by a few days, are buying root beer and ginger ale to celebrate the end of another year. I really don't care, anymore. I think it has to do with relative age.

I recall thinking, when I was twelve or thirteen, that my father was three times as old as I was. Eleven or twelve years later, he was only twice as old as I was. I was catching up fast. I never quite made it, but I gained the whole time. That explains why I am losing interest in celebrating New Year's Eve.

The universe is . . . oh . . . about 13 or 14 billion years old. It is difficult to know, exactly, because if no one was there when you are born, you have to figure it out, all alone, later, and it is easy to miss a billion years or so. In any case, I am gaining on it. I will probably not ever get all the way, but the difference between the age of everything else and me is diminishing, as the ratio shows.

I am at the "Yeah, yeah!" stage. Once I was just 7.1428571428571428571428571428571e-11 as old as the universe, but I am gaining on it, year by year. I will not bother you with the details: you will have to trust me.

So you understand why Mari and I are not going out tonight, but will open a bottle of champagne, nibble at shrimp, perhaps a little tiramisu, and recalculate, once again, how long it will be until we almost catch up with everything else. It is just a matter of being satisfied with the ratio, and we are that.

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