OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

Well, I spent the weekend getting our new entertainment center set up, all that cabling, etc. Now we note that it's out of square, sitting flush with the wall at the bottom, away from the wall by about 2 inches at the top, more of the same, being out-of-square, to the edge of the wall. Oh, well, life is that way, out-of-square and off-center.

It took a lot of time to take the 189 DVD's out of the old machine, merge them alphabetically with the 72 on the shelf, get them into the new player with the correct orientation and order, and get them registered (read that as typing in the title, to fit in 18 characters, by the way). But it's done. Still three on the shelf, but they're "flippers" so not much use putting them in the machine.

Watched "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton" this morning. I can honestly say that it had no deep philosophical points. Not that it didn't have points but they're ones that any self-respecting adult would have already nailed solidly into his/her psyche. Small-town girl loved by small-town guy (who's afraid to tell her) is swept off her feet by a big Hollywood hunk, but true love wins in the end.

Ho, hum. The only "deep" stuff comes from an over-tattooed bartender, who is by far the most interesting character in the movie.

You know, it seems that rejection just makes most women fight all the harder to attain the desires of their heart. And it makes most men just run off to find desire #2. OK, so I stole that from the movie. But it's not really deep. Maybe those reactions are the lesson of life that we've learned while dealing with the opposite sex, our "odds" of success impressed upon us from our younger days.

Speaking of those (younger days that is), I realized years ago that it is the young who are the major risk-takers of our society. They can afford to be. First, they haven't truly come to stand eye-to-eye with mortality yet. And second, they've got plenty of time to make serious mistakes and recover from them. This fact, however, has been pointed out to me very recently. I can't discuss it because it obviously involves someone else.

They say that when you have some life-threatening event in your life that it changes you. On the one hand, this can come with the realization that it is possible to be killed without even knowing it (it almost happened to juz). And, as in my case, it comes with the realization that it can happen at any time, within your ken or not, and there may be nothing you can do about it.

There are a lot of ways these events can affect you. It may make you re-evaluate your priorities, even change your life style completely. That didn't happen with me. It may make you appreciate life, every event, every minute, even more. That didn't happen with me. It may make you super-cautious with your life, or even super-incautious. That didn't happen with me.

No, it did make me appreciate what I have, and it made me impatient with life's trivialities. But most of all, it made me realize that the world without me would continue to revolve. People would go along just as they always have, and that the only effect I would have had in this world was among those very close to me.

If I died today, I could count on my fingers and toes those that might be affected in any way past an uttered "that's too bad." I'm not saying that the number of those who care is the important thing in a person's life, just reflecting upon how small most of our footprints are in the sands of our times.

And this feeling makes me want to spend more time with those people who do care, who find me valuable. It makes me realize the waste of time that work can be, the uselessness for me in grand plans or desires. I know, PC says, "You're never too old," "Don't let it get you down," "It's not over until the fat lady sings."

Let me tell you, when you have your second heart attack you can hear that lady warming up in the wings. You know that she can burst into song at any minute, that her aria trembles on her tongue.

As the paramedics start attaching things to you, as your co-workers stand around looking at you with that sympathetic/confused look, that same one on the faces in a crowd of witnesses to a car accident, you realize just how little control you have, how hollow PC phrases sound.

You realize how much your chest hurts and how, if it should stop hurting, it might be because you're deceased, so in a perverse way you want it to keep hurting.

I didn't want to get maudlin here, just reflecting on the ages of our lives and how they differ. At twenty-two I thought I could jump off a cliff and figure out how to handle the landing safely on the way down. Had no doubt of it at all. Now I'm not even going to approach the edge, sometimes I stumble and how would it look to die in that way just because I'm a klutz. What an epitaph.

As I told my wife last night, you put all your energy into life, powering your way through. Then you reach your fifties. You don't really see it happen, but one day, out of the blue, comes the realization that it isn't your world anymore. It's been highjacked by the younger people, those who can still have the energy and power to mold it into what THEY want.

In your thirties and forties you feel so on top of everything, so knowledgeable in a way you haven't been before. You've had enough hard knocks to know how to avoid them, or to at least roll with them. You're the movers and shakers of your time. But that time moves on, there's a whole batch of new thirty-somethings waiting their turn.

So, now, I'm content with what I have, will try to spend as much of my time with those who I care for and who care for me as I can, and I'll let the world be owned by those younger than me.

It wasn't all that great a property anyway.