ANSWER

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.  Kurt Vonnegut

That’s it, the correct answer: All those people on the A-list, the B-list and the Italian list are exactly my own age, give or take a few months. They didn’t go to my high school, but they would have graduated in the same year or the next. We all saw the same I Love Lucy reruns growing up. We were all in the same hospital nursery in side-by-side cribs.

I don’t know if that’s terror or community, but it strikes me. If I ever meet someone on that list, I’ll have a conversation starter. It makes me feel like I should be on a list of people my age doing something. Doing what? Something.

Maybe the real list contains a lot of real people whose lives and work are much more important than the celebrities, athletes and artists on my list of famous names. Okay then, let’s start making a list of the ordinary people my age (or your age) doing ordinary things in their mid-life. Keeping themselves together and keeping together those they care about in times of terror when we all feel like suicide bombers about to explode. What can keep us whole, sane, at peace?

If you go back a couple posts you can find one answer: each other. And I say that as one with very few friends, a small family and some general doubts about the attractiveness of my fellow humans. But, as any alien invasion film will show, we grasp onto one another, to members of our own species, in times of crisis. The problem is that this is a constant time of crisis. Yeah, but People, we made this mad, mad world of fear, we can unmake it. [Group hug here.]

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: What would you get if you crossed a donkey with an owl?

Jeff: A smart ass who knows it all.

Mutt: Like you. So what did the coach say to his losing team of snakes?

Jeff: You can't venom all.

Mutt: What would you get if you crossed a pigeon and a general?

Jeff: I’m on strike.

Mutt: A military coo.

Jeff: Alright, what did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?

Mutt: Um, make me one with everything.

Jeff: That’s right. Now I’ve got a query for you.

Mutt: You always have been queery.

Jeff: If I hated my house and fell in love with my office building, would that be an edifice complex?

Mutt: Nix, Jeff, Nix.