When You Are Sixteen

 

When you are 16, you are pretty sure that you are invincible.  Then, someone in your high school is killed in an automobile crash.  It doesn’t take long after that before you remember that you are invincible and life goes on. 

High school graduation arrives and you are off to college or the military or a trade school, an apprenticeship, or maybe your first job.  A few years pass.  Maybe you settle down, get married, have a couple of children, and have a steady job – or not so steady.  Then you hear from an old friend and learn that so-and-so passed away.  Perhaps he had been walking down the road and was hit by a car or maybe she died of cancer.  They were both your age, maybe younger.  You think to yourself that it’s sad that a friend’s life had been taken at such an age.  Maybe you are shaken to the core. You realize it could happen to you, but you think to yourself that it won’t happen, not yet, and life goes on. 

Then you retire and you watch a few years pass by.  More of your high school friends pass on.  You look at actuarial tables and learn that you can expect to die in a little over 12 years; 14 years if you are a woman.  Then, you learn that you have a 13% chance of dying in the next five years and a 30% chance of dying in the next ten years.  If the Grim Reaper hasn’t come for you in ten years, you are bound to meet the 75% chance of giving up the ghost in 20 years. 

It’s no wonder you are invincible at 16.  You have less than a five-percent chance of dying in 30 years when you are that young.  Sixteen-year-olds aren’t capable of looking 30 years into the future.  But when you are in your 70s, looking back 30 years seems like yesterday.