Birthday Timer Quotes

Unable to swim, he had maneuvered to fall off an old-timers’ party yacht in the Hudson River. His departure was not remarked by the revelers. They motored on toward the Atlantic and he bobbed around in the wash. He couldn’t swim. But he did. He learned how. Before he knew it, he was making time and nearing the dock where a small Italian liner sat dead still, white, three stories high. Nobody was around when he pulled up on a stray rope on the wharf and walked erect to the street, where cars were flashing. Day after tomorrow was his seventieth birthday. What a past, he said. I’ve survived. Further, I’m horny and vindictive. Does the fire never stop?

There’s a special sort of melancholy that comes with big milestone birthdays. All that was, could have been and might now never be. The crippling clarity that if there’s something you want to do, you’d better crack on because the sand is pouring through the egg timer at an alarming rate and now is still possible, but never is infinitely more likely.

Fibber’s statement of “If I ever get to be 91…” is prophetic for that is the age Jim Jordan was when he died in 1988. The Old Timer celebrates his birthday on January 1st and claims to be 89 years old. Judging by the cost of the dinner, an evening of food and film for three adults in 1954 was about $6.00, less than the price of admission for one at a cineplex today.