Steve Jobs and the Pits

Maybe it is because this is one of those days when I am paying bills.
It is one of those days when I realize that I have missed my calling:
I should have been a juggler. I did not miss it: I am a juggler!

Steve Jobs--the Apple of the I-Phone--had not even been born
when I graduated from college. He is 55, and he has cancer.

At coffee this morning, I said that every once in a while
I think it would have been nice to get to my age and have
a bank account but that, right now, I would not trade places
with Steve Jobs.

"Getting old is the pits!", someone just wrote; someone
just a few years older than Steve Jobs.

No, getting old is not the pits. Having cancer is the pits,
but not getting old. Getting old is better than almost every
alternative. Getting old and wearing out is not without cost,
but it is a lot more fun than being twenty again; being young
and virile and full of piss and vinegar and hormones; being
insecure, and unaware, and anxious about being somebody.

I suspect that, right now, Steve Jobs would like the chance
to get old, and wear out in a most ordinary way.
I hope he makes it. With or without a lot of money,
but with enough to stay warm, to draw Social Security
if he needs it, and to afford the kind of health care
all of us hope we will have as we grow older;
arthritis, and bad hips, and thinning hair, and all!

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