Drinking a Fifth
March 4, 2008
“It is estimated that Americans now spend, on average, fourteen years of their lives watching TV.”
“We tend to over-report our good behavior, under-report our bad behavior.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Fourteen divided by seventy-four — a life span.
Multiply the quotient by one hundred.
Nineteen percent.
About one-fifth of your life (if you’re average, of course).
Sever one leg completely from your body.
Take it from the hip down.
Now run fast.
Take your house and board up a room
(without first removing anything from it).
How cramped do you feel?
Are there five in your family?
Shoot one.
How long will you grieve?
Drop your salary from forty to thirty-two thousand.
Burn eight thousand one-dollar bills, on by one.
Cover yourself with their ashes.
What is twenty percent of our vision?
When gone, are we legally blind?
Lose ten points from your IQ:
Slam your head against a brick wall
repeatedly.
Can you still understand this?
And if all this is too daunting, go down easy:
watch others live their lives.
Disregard your own,
the real one,
the one slipping away.