How Time Slips Away

A new restaurant opened next to UM, in a place that was KC Cagney's when I started college. Cagney's was one of those late 70s/early 80s "fern bars," a then upscale looking place where you could take a date and get a beer and burger on a college budget.

So a brew pub replaced it recently. I got an ad from them today -- inviting me to their TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY party! Two decades sprinted by somehow.

Time relativity is apparent to anyone who pays attention. In college being told something was 6 months in the future seemed like saying it would happen next century. Now -- 6 months seems about a week long to me.

I try to mark the milestones in life. I used to pride myself on remembering when stuff happened -- it gets harder to do as the years roll by.

On Monday, I'll see my California sister for the first time in awhile. I was trying to remember when we were last together -- was it before our Mom died, in 2013? No -- FaceBook (tm) came to the rescue -- it showed a photo from three years ago of all of us in Sonoma -- we met there with her boy Henry and his wife Val, and then caravaned to Half Moon Bay. It was 2016 -- three years in the past.

Wifey and I will take the same route this weekend -- Sonoma, for our friends' 25th wedding anniversary get together, and then Half Moon Bay for the family reunion.

Wifey always remembers meeting my nephew at MIA, in 1984. He was an impossibly blonde, beautiful baby -- she called him a Swedish meatball. Henry was less than a year old -- my sister came for a Florida visit with him and his then toddler brother, PJ.

Somehow Henry is now 34, and a wildly successful owner of a media company in the Bay Area, married to his beautiful and lovely and intelligent high school sweetheart. Again -- those years flew by somehow.

Yesterday I got a call from John, a retired cop and traffic accident consultant. We share the same July birthday, though he was born one year later. He called to say he was officially an old man -- his daughter was pregnant. She's nearly finished with her training to be an OB/Gyn -- I asked if she needed help finding a good doctor. John laughed -- she was under the care of her colleagues in Virginia.

John has had two near fatal heart attacks -- he has a congenital problem, and still pursues vigorous activities like motorcross. To him, each day is precious.

To me as well. I have a morbid habit -- I share with my friends, particularly Barry, tales I hear about guys our age or nearly so who died. It's my way of whistling past the graveyard.

The other night, I was wondering if I could figure out whether I got the proper measles vaccine, since the once eliminated disease is making a comeback thanks to moron anti-vaxxers, as they're called.

I researched my Long Island pediatrician, Dr. Bernard Curtis. I still remember his courtly and calm manner. His name popped up in a book I wish I had written: "Famous People Who Dropped Dead."  Dr. Curtis wasn't famous, but I guess he was pretty well known on LI.

Turns out he was seeing patients at Long Island Jewish Hospital, the place I was born, and dropped of a heart attack. He was 58. My friend Kenny pointed out -- no problem -- he was older than us. I turn 58 in less than three months.

Time really DOES slip away.