I’ve recently been diagnosed with a pernicious disease, Creeping Aging Anxiety Phenomenon (CR.A.A.P.), primarily affecting aging Boomers. The “Don’t trust anyone over 30” generation finds themselves trapped in a cycle of denial with their best years behind them and the reality of aging in front of them.

I have some good news and some bad news. Good news first because we all need every bit of good news. First, and I’m so excited to hear this, according to the Social Security Administration’s Life Expectancy Calculator, at my current age of 74 and 9 months, I can expect an additional life expectancy of 12.1 years (hell yeah). According to them, I will live to see 86.8 years of life. Their predictor of life and death states that I can expect to live until sometime during 2035 (thank goodness, an off-year presidential election). Whoopee! I better get going with that book I want to write, the MFA I would like to earn, the list of countries and U.S. states I want to visit, and I guess I better get going on that will and trust I’ve been droning on about.

Now, the bad news. 12.1 years is a short time when you are approaching, having lived a total of seventy-five years. Before those of you who know my past self-destructive behavior (I won’t bore you with repeating the long list of abuses) say anything, I did read the fine print of the Retirement & Survivors Benefits: Life Expectancy Calculator, Social Security Administration. Note: The estimates of additional life expectancy:

• Do not take into account a wide number of factors such as current health, lifestyle, and family history that could increase or decrease life expectancy.
• Are based on the sex and date of birth you entered (your cohort) and Information from our cohort life expectancy tables. (Some of the information can be found in the 2023 Trustees Report.)

I am well aware that my current high Blood Pressure issues, leaking heart valve, chronic cough (it ain’t from cigarettes, I can predict), and weight overload may have some influence on the outcome. I could spout a long list of variables that could contribute to my current state of CR.A.A.P. I could trip on a curb like I’ve done before and break my titanium kneecaps, sending splinters into my vein so it can travel up to my leaking heart valve, causing a massive heart attack and killing me. Or how about getting stuck in a massive traffic jam on the 405 freeway on my way to San Juan Capistrano, where one of my favorite taquerias is located, and then the traffic doesn’t move for days, and I starve to death or die from dehydration or worse, boredom (it could happen).

Any number of possible death scenarios before my time during the next 12.1 years would send my physical body into a state of decomposition. There are potential car accidents, nuclear or terrorist or both attacks, being caught under my bed during an earthquake. The light-ceiling fan combo falling and crushing me (or it could just fall on me while I’m lying in bed at 2 a.m., totally oblivious to the earthquake because I once said that only an earthquake of 8.0 is worth getting out of bed for in the middle of the night). Being shot or stabbed is not my preferred mode of death, so I don’t want to think about the possibility (not that I know from experience what those might feel like. Just don’t do it, okay?).

Of course, the potential viruses and diseases could do me in before my time. I mean, hell, what about COVID? But there’s also lung cancer, Parkinson’s, Multiple Myeloma, and Alzheimer’s, all illnesses that I’m very familiar with because a family member who is now dead suffered from one of them.

Yeah, the Social Security Administration is unclear about those obstacles, aren’t they? A person gets overly optimistic that they have a little more than 12 years left in their life, and they begin thinking about all the great things that they’re going to have to stuff into that time, and the first instinct is to say, fuck it, it’s not worth my time. Or I should sit at my computer and watch reruns of the Darrel E. Brooks trial (oh, that’s a winner. You thought the O.J. Simpson trial was a circus) or the escapades of Karens in the Wild or another Police Shooting of an Unarmed Suspect or two people beating each other to death over a road rage incident or worse, they wanted the same television on sale at Walmart! (obviously a rationale for murder).

I’ll tell you what gives me CR.A.A.P. more than anything these days: it’s the prospect that I may have to live through the next twenty-five months of political theatre running up to the 2024 election. Please, I tell myself, don’t let me live through that shit show. The thought is enough to send me down the 710 Freeway looking for an 18-wheeler to crash into me.

My therapist tells me that my CR.A.A.P. is to be expected from aging boomers. I must accept the anxiety and plow ahead with my educational and career plans, even at my age. He knows full well that I am one intense, calculating, committed sonofabitch when I want to be and that I’ve overcome so many obstacles when I was a running alcoholic-drug addict that I should imagine what is possible when I am no longer that person. Now, Sober. Cojones. Ganas. Coraje. All worthwhile ingredients needed to fulfill a life only once dreamed of. Not a life of CR.A.A.P. but one of Aging Challenges Top-offed (ACT). Now, that’s something I can live with for the next 12.1 years.