The book of death dates

Would you look to see when your time is up?

Published: Wednesday, June 22, 2009

I’d like you to take a minute to think about your mortality. Thanks.

Every so often I am required by my own head, the mailed reminder and my mum to get the medical stamp of approval. I am being checked to see that I haven’t inherited the disease which has seen my old man disabled for most of his working life.

The human body was only ever meant to go through so much, so you can imagine the emotional roller coaster that was last Wednesday when even six cold implements protruding from my various orifices wasn’t as awful as having my testicles in the hands of a very attractive locum and not being able to celebrate this in the usual way. Ah Dr Cook take me in your latex hands once more. Cough.




Engaging in flirtatious conversation (almost exclusively by me, and I’m gash at it) I almost didn’t notice the vast array of glistening medical implements being meticulously laid out before me. These shiny tools could all do serious harm to a man, a point which created just a smidge of nerves in the old stomach. When I admitted as much to the good Doctor she asked me a seriously profound question which I put to you now:

Pointing at her diary, she asked me: “if that there was a book of death dates and yours was in it would you look?”

I thought long and hard (the opposite to what I was thinking in my earlier predicament…cough) and decided that the control freakery present in my personality would succumb to the temptation of the book. I’d want to know just for knowing sake. I have a feeling the world shall need Ally at some point.

Since I don’t have any friends I asked random people what they would do if faced with the same dilemma. I was of the opinion that no one could resist the mystery of the book. But to look or not to look that was the question.

The lucky laid back types were almost unanimously adverse to finding their date which I kind of understand. It is possible that a crippling paranoid paralysis, a misery would overwhelm you until your date does, you don’t want to know – its part of the illusion and opaqueness of death.

I however would want to know. Could you imagine the crap it would cut out of your every day life? Sack work, sack small talk, sack foreplay. Sod caring about who’s name is on your underwear, wondering whether girls find you attractive since the onset of the chin-waddle, does my bum look big in this… (note to self you are a guy, and of course not stud.)
Sack work, sack small talk, sack foreplay. Sod caring about who’s name is on your underwear

All the little itty bitty pieces of superficial crap and aesthetic nonsense we comprehend, deal out and deal with on a daily basis.

One wouldn’t necessarily walk past the hookers and drug spots in Amsterdam on their whistle stop tour round the world funded by 25 credit cards. You would see it all one go with a giddy thrill that sees caution swept away by whatever continental wind in which you’re basking.

If I were told I’d go in 80 years, I’d first marvel at what possible medical breakthroughs will come by then that allow a mal-nourished smoker who does no exercise to live to 106. But I would keep doing what I’m doing.

Working, keeping an eye on the bank balance, watching what I eat, doing my housework, watching spirit crushing, demoralising soap operas, Jeremy Kyle, and dreaming of beautiful women instead of going out to confidently seek them.

I worry about who’s name is on my boxers, who’s smell I have on, and what people think of me. I lose sleep over nasty things people have said to me about this website and I do it in a cold bed because I’m too mean to put the heating on. Tragic, no?

Can you imagine the crap we could filter out if whoever holds key to the good book lets the information run as free as the emancipated deathproofs now out there? Not worrying about the nonsense; the incidentals; the crap.

Knowing the end of the great journey so as to humbly and fully enjoy the path. Sounds so quaint doesn’t it.

I probably need to grow a pair, get out more or go back to Doctor Cook (any excuse) as I have been thinking about this for three days straight. I want to know my date. Surely it would kick start those with motivational problems to get off their arse and embrace life and those cynical old sods like me could stop lambasting the trivial things and learn to let go.

I would like you to ponder over your summer what you would do if you found out your date. Would you find it liberating and intoxicating or paranoia-inducing? Maybe it’d be like someone telling you Bruce Willis is dead before you see the Sixth Sense. Oops. Ah well it doesn’t matter no one’s gonna get annoyed and kill me – I discovered I’m off in 80 years time. Oh and Brucie’s dead.