Six Early Signs of Wisdom
1. Acquantance with death, and death's singular insight that what we are is everything, and what we might have been does not exist.
2. Increasingly regular appreciation of everyone who doesthinkssays what you know you can'twon'tdon't.
3. Seat belts and suntan lotion.
4. Calm knowledge that after you stop stepping on her feet you will find the rhythm, and she will forgive you.
5. Humility! Gratitude! A proper sense of urgency, and the energy left to carry it out!
6. A marked loss of fascination with insanity—yours and others', and the combination of both.
Six Early Signs of Senility
1. Words popping into your head from absolutely nowhere. Words like, "mesothelioma."
2. The question, "Am I getting fat?" still no closer to being resolved seven years after you tore your suit pants, sneezing.
3. Surprise farts!
4. The one-beer buzz, the five-beer fuzz, the 12-beer was.
5. Anxiety about nothing, which you're too cowardly to call "fear of everything."
6. The slow replacement of convictions by suspicions, instincts by habits, feelings by excuses, ideas by opinions (and opinions by one random thing that happened to you on a trip to Italy when you were) and essays by lists.
Feel free to add your own signs to this list—and stay tuned for tomorrow, when I reveal Six Early Signs of Wisdom.