Basket Case

I'm not all that into whodunits as a reading genre, but I am hooked on Carl Hiassen. He's funny and quirky and aside from that, an absolutely terrific storyteller. In his novel, Basket Case, we meet our protagonist Jack Tagger. He used to be, as described in the plot synopsis on the book jacket, a hotshot investigative reporter. Due to his own unfortunate doing, he has been busted to writing obituaries for the newspaper. He is not happy about this turn of events. And he has become obsessed with the ages at which people die, constantly comparing their abbreviated longevity to his current age. He constantly calculates his relative age and state of health to that of his obit occupants. It could be an interesting and enlightening task to sum up the lives of those who have passed, but Jack is engaged in the dark side. His own mother won't tell him how old his father was when he died. She fears he will read too much into that information. And she's right. Jack is also a little too attentive to noticing the color and style in which his very attractive and female boss has painted her toenails. Which has nothing to do with what's on my brain this evening. A week or so ago, I felt a rather uncomfortable kinship with Mr. Tagger while anticipating the second anniversary of my brother's death. Scott was ten days shy of two years older than me. Which means that yesterday was the day when I was precisely the same age as my older brother was when he died. Logically I know that there's no cause and effect here, but just the same I heaved a sigh of relief last night when I looked at the clock and it was past midnight. I was still breathing! I still had a pulse! It's a strange feeling to attain a greater age than an older sibling. I remember as a child how delighted I was to inform him during the ten days between my birthday and his that he was a mere single year older than me. So there! Thereby somehow diminishing his superiority of rank as firstborn. Or something. And today I am one day older than he ever was. And I'm happy to be here, even on days like today when I feel myself slipping into a bit of a funk. I fully intend to live to be at least a hundred years old. Like Sandy said today, she does, too. Otherwise she won't have had near enough time to annoy the select people on her list. I concur. And the Subaru doesn't have even close to a million miles on the odometer. Yet.