It's better to burn out than to fade away!

by effenheimer at 08:11 PM on August 17, 2003

Each year as the grim specter of death comes closer to clipping my tail feathers forever, (ie, Aug. 15, my birthday, rolls around) I like to take a few moments and reflect on just how crippling my mortal fear has become.
A few months ago, I awoke in the middle of the night with what I can only call a rational response to the sure knowledge of my fate on my lips. As I bolted from my troubled slumber, I heard myself gasp for breath and say through tears of panic, “I’m dying!” True story.
Now, I am not one of these guys who tries to claim that his birthday comes and goes without notice. I do not await my birthday with the same anticipation I once did, to be sure. That is because today I can buy my own damn toys. If I want that new Batman action figure, I don’t wait breathless with anticipation for my parents to get it, I go to Comic City and fight all the other fat geeks for it. So there. I also take candy from strangers, run with scissors and pet dogs with a reckless abondon.
Let’s face it, at 6, I could afford to be oblivious. At 35, my life is probably half over. Statistically, my life is probably MORE than half over. Realistically, I was probably at the halfway point shortly after I became old enough to drink legally.
I do not pretend that my birthday is just another day. No, that is for men who are either made of stronger stuff or who are incapable of looking death in the eye and wetting their pants like men. I choose to see my birthday as clear evidence that 1) I am so close to death I can smell his skids and 2) I have piddled away yet another year upon this earth having failed to achieve any number of things that have been on my “to-do” list since 1973.

That list contained such diverse and wondrous things as:
See a shuttle launch.
Travel to Europe.
Make love to a really beautiful woman I do not have to pay.
Have a child. A good one and preferably by a really beautiful woman I do not have to pay.
Be the front man of my own garage band and perform live before throngs of appreciative music lovers who really “get it” and teenaged girls who are likely to.
I wanted to finish my masters degree, but now I just want ISU to give it to me for being famous or at least notorious if not nefarious.
Get into a really good, justifiable-type, self-defense kind of fight with a guy in his early 20s, kick his ass, make his girlfriend hold my jacket and stand over him when it’s all over and ask him loudly, “Now whose blood flows?”
Write, direct, produce and star in my own movie about a guy who drives to Sioux City with a buddy of his and has a really interesting conversation about all kinds of things. I would shoot it in widescreen sepia tone and air it on HBO or CB17 over and over and over again much to the amusement and delight of everyone touched by its “realism, native wit and genuine emotion.”
Eat a burrito as big as my head.
Star on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and have those wonderfully snarky queens turn this gay-friendly fat guy into a fabulous superstar.
Read about a thousand books I never got around to.
Smite all of my enemies for their sins (you know who you are, BWAH HA HA!).
Take part in a traditional sweat lodge ceremony.
Finish my ninja training, become silent dealer of death like Detective Keith Jones and his boy sidekick Loren Knauss, aka The Presbyterian Avenger.
Have a sandwich named after me.
Grow my hair down to my butt.
Enter a monastery. Join one, not just go inside and turn around and leave.
Learn a foreign language well enough to actually have a conversation with a native speaker.
Watch all 1,225 half-hour episodes of the 1966-1971 ABC cult classic soap opera “Dark Shadows.”

Some of the things I have managed to accomplish on that list include:
Become a columnist.
Sing “Sweet Child O’Mine” karaoke style, in public, without fear... and ROCK!
Lose my virginity (better late than never).
Go to New York, fall off a curb on Broadway the first night, manage to go NOWHERE and see NOTHING.
Become the Beer Bong King from Hell of Alpha Sigma Phi.
Find my birth mother, borrow money.
Kick heroin habit, gain 250 pounds.
Cut down on salt, increase potassium.
See all 156 episodes of “The Twilight Zone.”

In the end, I suppose living well will be the best determination of the worth of a man’s life, but frankly, I don’t know what the hell “livving well” is supposed to mean. I haven’t read very many biographies of people whose greatest accomplishment was “living well.” A guy’s got to have a few more things under his belt than that meekness, I reckon.
The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long and while it goes against the grain, it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Just make sure to leave something behind more substantial than a credit record.