Ah...damn it

If you haven't heard yet about the St. Louis Cardinals pitcher who died this past weekend...he was 33 and supposedly in pretty darned good health. He died in the same hotel I slept in a couple of weeks ago.

I am going to die.

I am not afraid of death. When I go, I go. But, frankly, I'd much prefer to stick around for a while. I'm having a pretty good time with my life and I don't have much desire to visit the great beyond right now.

The thing is...I routinely vandalize my temple. Booze graffiti, fried food toilet paper, and a host of other unmentionable rocks that get thrown through my temple's windows are going to kill me. I'm 28 years old.

Editor's note: This is not an invitation for you to start listing ways in the comments section about how poorly I treat my body. I'm fully aware of it, thank you.

This happens to me once every few years. An old roommate called it "That Fear of Death Thing."

I once lived alone in Jackson, Mississippi. Since there was no one around to complain, I routinely walked around my one bedroom apartment without a shirt. Over the course of a few months, I noticed a strange freckle in my navel. It didn't take long for me to start believing that I had Belly Button Cancer.

As it turned out, the freckle was just a freckle. Guess it had been there for a long time and it just took an expanding waistline for me to see it.

But, oh God!. I was getting fat! Again! Surely my arteries were clogged. My heart working much too hard! Heart disease...a family problem.

Blood pressure...fine. Cholestesterol...fine. Heart rate...fine.

Yet...I'm going to die.

I don't routinely think I'm sick. I make myself sick a lot, but constant problems of hypochondria are not my bag. I don't fall ill very often. And frankly, that scares me. I mean, my body must be storing up all a life's illnesses for one big sha-bang.

I think I need to have a minor illness. Right now.

I'm off to lick a sick person's sweat.