WONDERING

WONDERING

I woke this morning and lay in bed wondering what time it was. I tried to estimate it from the light coming through the windows. No luck. I flipped on the radio and listened to some "doctor" pitch the benefits of green tea extract. (You can't take too much of that.) I wondered if it had rained like was forecast. I wondered what I would do on a Bengal-free Sunday. I wondered if I would be able to go to the park and jog. I wondered if all this exercise was really doing me any good. All this led me to think about death. How many years have I cut off of my life by smoking for forty years? Eighty years seems like plenty to live. Funny how when you are forty, sixty years seemed like plenty. When I was thirty, fifty years seemed like plenty. When I'm seventy, I bet eighty wont seem like enough.

Anyway, my thoughts moved to my friend, Warren Grote, who died earlier this year. He died of brain cancer. We played softball together for 15 or twenty years. The tumor hit him and all of us like a ton of bricks. We had his initials put on our uniform shirts. I don't know why it crossed my mind this morning but he lived right next to high voltage overhead power lines. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I saw a show on TV years ago about how people were claiming a connection between these two situations. Of course, the power company dismissed it and claimed no scientific evidence. I wonder.