by Jim Jividen

Created on: January 09, 2009   Last Updated: March 25, 2009

I'm a child.

Those of you who know me more than a little bit recognize this; my tastes in food and entertainment remain as lowbrow as did they 30 years ago (want to see me brighten up give me a fried fruit pie and a wrestling match to watch); my emotional architecture still collapses when I feel abandoned (no, I haven't been dumped again, that's not where this is going); I have never evidenced the slightest ability to put on a face other than the one that best expressed my immediate essence (I'd be terrible at the strategic reality shows I most like; I can't pretend to like people I do not like and I'm still the 8 year old squirming in terrible boredom when forced to do something I don't want to do).

Arrested development isn't just the name of one of the ten best television shows of the past quarter century it clearly defines who I am. I am stuck, immobile, a boyman, all change and I remain the same. Just a little less cute with each passing year.

My principal failure to grow has been in my childlike inability to wrap my mind around death with anything other than a barbed wire bow of terror and pain. I would lie awake nights trying to reconcile how one lives in a world where god was dead (I wasn't really reading Nietzsche when I was 8, I stuck with The Sporting News, but I recall articulating a similar idea). Every ambulance I ever saw racing down the street was one which, one day, would be headed for my house. Every sickness brought to mind that one day, there'd be a stomach ache from which I wouldn't recover. Every night I fell asleep I thought, "one of these nights I won't wake up."

A constant sword dangling over my head.

Only question was how will it happen?

How will it happen to me?

Will I suffer a long, lingering illness a steady erosion of my body until I can no longer care for my most basic physical functions? Will I battle go through painful and expensive medical treatments only to eventually succumb? Will I shuffle painfully through hospital hallways, a shell of the man I used to be until finally I beg for it to end? John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach is 98, he says he wishes death would come. His wife died in 1985, and still today, 23 years later, her half of the bed is untouched when the sheets are washed and placed back on the bed, he returns her dressing gown and pillow arrangement exactly as was it 2 plus decades ago. Is that how it will be? Will I watch that sword crash down upon everyone I love filling my last, weakest, loneliest years

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