Life Comes At You Slow, David

If you get a chance, read Brian O'Neill's column on getting old.

It starts like this:

You know you’re getting old when . . .

So you know I'm not mis-representing.

Anyway, he starts by admitting he defrauded a movie theatre for twenty-five cents while also admitting he went alone to see an Anne Hathaway movie (The Intern, co-starring someone named Robert DeNiro).

I kid.  I kid because I care, Brian.

Then he gets to Ed Asner:

That was a month ago, if memory serves, and can it really at your age? More recently, you pick up your Sunday paper (because you still prefer the feel of the printed page, coot that you are). You see among the listed birthdays, “Actor Ed Asner, 86.’’ Your brain synapses fire up and return you to the day you met him, nearly 27 years ago.

You’ve been in Pittsburgh barely a month when Mr. Asner arrives for a pre-Broadway production of “Born Yesterday.’’

That would be late November, 1988.  Back to Brian:

You ask him to channel Mr. Grant and tell you to how to cover this story on Mr. Asner. “The story isn’t Asner,’’ he growls over his vodka, neat.“It’s the people at the Rainbow Kitchen.’’

You follow his advice and write your column more or less that way. You think, man, what a great old guy. Twenty-seven years later, you do the math in your head and realize you’re older than he was then.

Did someone say math?  And for our British readers, that last question should have read "Did someone say maths?" (And I just don't have the berlins necessary to write the whole bloody thing in British).

If my arithmetic is correct, Ed Asner was a few weeks past his 59th birthday at that point.  But seeing as this is a blog and as a blogger, I am always writing about me, let's see how Asner Time works in my life.

As of this date, I am 19,040 days old.  So adding 19,040 days to Ed Asner's birthday we get (again if my maths are correct) January 1, 1982.

Lou Grant (everyone remembers Lou Grant, right?  It was a dramatic spin-off of the Mary Tyler More Show?) was in its last season when Ed Asner was the age I am now.

Its last season.

This was the first episode of Lou Grant broadcast:


That was September 20, 1977, when Ed Asner was was 17,476 days old

OR

1,564 days younger than I am today.  4 years 104 days younger, to put it in other terms.

By this point in their lives:

• Beethoven was working his last symphony
• Brahms was working his last symphony
• Mozart was already dead 16 years, 3 months and 10 days.

Life comes at you slow, for sure.