This happened last Saturday.

Frank and I were going to the Diner to get lunch.  This is the sort of thing I like to do on Saturdays.  Didn’t really have any plans for the day, didn’t really have any concerns, didn’t really have much on my mind.  Sunny day, pleasant.

I walked out of my house with a load of dry cleaning, dropped it off at the place around the corner, and we started walking on Calvert St.  Just a normal, ordinary, carefree Saturday doing the sort of little stuff that makes me feel relaxed and content.

I don’t remember, as hard as I’ve tried, what Frank said that set it off, or even if it was in response to anything at all, but all of a sudden, in a great whooshing tsunami that buckled my knees and made my vision blur, it hit me:

LIFE ENDS.  I AM GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY.  THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO TO CHANGE THIS.

Now.  I cannot remember an age young enough where I didn’t constantly panic about getting older.  When I turned 26 — the age when, as a kid, I decided one was too old to embark on a career in Major League Baseball — I freaked out about the loss of that dream, despite the fact that, well, I’ll be kind to my athletic abilities and say I’d already chosen a different path.  But I had similar panics about graduating from college, choosing a major, graduating from high school, leaving Little League, graduating from elementary school, etc.  There is nothing new about this panic: “Oh my God, a piece of my life is over, never to be re-lived.”

That’s not what this was.  For the first time, it struck me that, well, there’s only so much music on the tape.  And when the song’s over, you don’t get to play it again.  It’s just…over.  Click.  Silence.

And there’s no use getting upset about it, because it happens to everyone and it’s normal.  Just like freezing rain or biting down on aluminum foil or colonoscopies, it’s one of those things that the human race has inexplicably decided we’re all okay dealing with.

Well — I’m not!  I’m just starting to get the hang of being alive.  The idea that there is such a thing as “not being alive” is incredibly frightening.  And I’d never really thought about it until last Saturday.

So, this hit me in a big wave and I actually needed a few minutes to recover.  Then I went and ate a sandwich.

What did I learn from my first mortality panic attack?  Well, I did eat a bran muffin for breakfast the other day.  But I think the thing it made me regret was spending time like it didn’t belong to me.  Not the days I spent playing video games or organizing baseball cards or staring at the ceiling playing with Rocket — that’s some of the stuff I should be doing while I can!

No, the thing I want to stop doing is losing control of my time.  It’s not the hours spent playing video games, it’s the months spent living inside my head instead of in the real world, the years spent being afraid to take chances or trust people or go for things I really want.

Apparently, my life isn’t going to be eternal.  It might as well be mine.

Also, bran muffins are pretty tasty, it turns out.

-andy