The Cure for Old

184 The Cure for Old

Here it is. The fountain of youth. The way to stay young for longer, if not forever.

Credit Billingame the steamfitter for this one. Billingame was fiddling with the furnace in a big downtown office building a few years ago and it came to him, just like that.

The light bulb went off right over his head, so strong, you could practically see it.

Don’t have a birthday every year. Make it once every 18 months.

So your birthday comes in, say, January, 2007 and you’re maybe 45 years old. In 2008, you wait until June. In January, 2008, you’re still 45. You don’t get to be 46 until June, 2008.

In June, 2008, you celebrate your 46^th birthday. And then, you want another 18 months so that you don’t turn 47 until January of 2010.

Had Billingame started this the year he was born, 1962, he’d already be much younger. But you have to play the hand you were delt.

There is a kind of a conflict here, though. For some years, Billingame is a Capricorn and for others he’s a Gemini. That makes for some interesting internal clashes. And it’s murder when the three of them try to get together.

What about doing this with your taxes? Corporations often do it, so why not you. You pay taxes every April? How old fashioned. April 07. Then you wait until October 08. Then April 2010. The IRS will probably frown on this. But you can always remind them that you have shifted to an 18 month year. That ought to hold them.

Of course, this will delay your entry into medicair. And it will lengthen the time you’re draft-bait (not to mention jail bait.) It’ll take longer for you to drink legally and longer to retire. But the retirement systems are a shambles, anyway. A small price to pay for the extended youth.

Use Billingame’s system and you will be in the “desirable” demographic much longer than your friends and neighbors.

And, of course, you will look older than you “are.”

But, again, a small price to pay when you can say in all honesty that you’re not yet legally 50.

These days, age is a disease. Just ask any boomer yuppie. It’ll be hard to accept the source of this new calculation, because the guy who thought it up is neither a boomer nor a yuppie, but an ordinary working stiff. A steamfitter.

So throw off the shackles that bind you to a mere number.

Accounting magic can work for everyone.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR