TO MARK OSHINSKIE, ON HIS 67th BIRTHDAY

Toward the end of Derek Jeter’s successful baseball career, the NY Times Magazine published a long article entitled “To Derek Jeter, on His 37th Birthday.” I later learned that this title alluded to a Michelle Pfeiffer movie, “To Gillian, on Her 37th Birthday.” I’m not much of a cinemagoer.

The Jeter story focused on his late-career decline and how all athletes inevitably lose their ability to compete, no matter how hard they train or how carefully they eat. In particular, the writer noted that reflexes worsen over time. He stated that no person ever tested could tap his index finger on a tabletop as many times in ten seconds after age 41 as he had before that. In baseball, quick neuromuscular reaction is essential. So is keen eyesight, and eyesight also worsens in one’s forties.

Sports provide various metaphors for life. All things must pass.

Today, I feel fortunate to have completed 67 years on this planet. On a few occasions, some of which I’ve written about and some which I haven’t—and won’t—my earthly time has almost ended. I’ve outlived many people I’ve known, including dozens of former schoolmates and work colleagues. Zero died from, or even with, Covid.

During the past 57 months, many of the Covid-crazy have fantasized that people like me would gasp to death from a virus that we had called wildly exaggerated and unworthy of any of the social and economic dislocation or shots.

But (the heck with) them. I’m still here. I’ve outlived tens of millions of Covid cloisterers and injectees. I’ll survive hundreds of millions more. I’ve noticed that those who jabbed often get sick. Jabbers, the shots you loved were worthless and worse than that. They didn’t love you back.

From Coronmania’s onset, the government and media sold the Big Lie that a virus imperiled all people, regardless of age and that, therefore, all should hide from other humans and later, take a series of experimental shots. Most bought the universal peril narrative. Even those who belatedly acknowledged that Covid’s risks were badly overstated and age-skewed insisted that one’s 60th birthday was some ominous threshold. Yet, from the outset, statistics showed that remotely healthy 60-somethings were at microscopic risk of Covid death. So were reasonably healthy septuagenarians. After 80, we’re all on extra time, as they say in soccer.

I can still do all the things I could do in my twenties, though not as fast or—as with sleeping and exerting myself—for as long. I’ll spend part of my birthday, as I spend many days, either playing basketball or hockey skating. Thereafter, I’ll take a nap or a day off and do it again. I didn’t use to need that rest. I listen to my body and have gradually made some concessions. I’ve played way longer than I had expected. It hasn’t been hard. It’s been fun. If I snap a tendon, it could end next week.

By now, I’ve had all of life’s important experiences. I’ve known and liked many people. I got to marry my favorite one. We created and raised three kids together. I’ve been many places. I’ve done much, varied work, grown and built things, made some art, played some music and laughed a lot. Ellen and I can salsa. Que bueno.

I’ve also had disappointments and failed at stuff. Asi es la vida.

I’ve tried to make the best of my 24,472 days and nights. Something’s lost and something’s gained in living every day.

I wish not to die soon and don’t expect to. But it wouldn’t be cosmically unjust if I didn’t wake up tomorrow morning. Hundreds of millions of strangers have died much younger in wars or from other violence; or of hunger abroad, as millions did when the Scamdemic orchestrators induced an international economic coma. May God rest their souls.

Society shouldn’t have missed a beat, much less been drastically restructured, ostensibly, but not actually, to protect people my age. The vaunted virus didn’t put us at any greater risk than our baseline health and birth certificates presented. With each passing year, life becomes incrementally more provisional and less active. It was profoundly foolish to exchange precious, vital, interpersonal time for fear and isolation.

Irrespective of the senior voting bloc and the AARP lobby, older people should have loudly opposed locking down and injecting the young. The generations behind us deserved to live as freely, healthily and prosperously as we have, or at least used to.

Tonight, in a dark dining room, I’ll bask in the warmth of many candles before blowing them out, thus spreading microbes to people I love, and then eating more than my share of the sweet potato pie beneath.

Please pass the whipped cream. Hold the boosters.