Thirty-Nine.

Among other things, from wikipedia:

The traditional number of times citizens of Ancient Rome hit their slaves when beating them, referred to as “Forty save one”

…because, the full forty would likely kill a man.

There’s something to that. This year, my thirty-ninth trip around the sun, wasn’t a particularly easy one; it has been, one could say, rather punishing. My health, both physical and mental, suffered; many times this year, I’ve felt beaten. You’ve read the tweets and the blog posts – you all know how it’s been. But, I’ve survived it.

Because I had help. And for that, I say, “39” (“thank you” in Japanese internet slang – it’s a numeric pun – see above) to the many people who’ve helped me get through it. You all know who you are – well, some of you may not know you are, and given my general vow of vagueness around these parts, I’m not going to name names here; rest assured that I’m grateful, and have probably thanked you in person more than once, and if I haven’t, I apologize.

Otherwise, thirty-nine, I guess, puts me square into what people call “middle age”, I guess, since if I make it to 78 and a half, I’ll be doing really well. I haven’t particularly felt the motivation to go buy a fancy sports car (in fact, I went ahead and bought what might be considered the anti-sports car), though I will admit to looking covetously at a couple of mid-to-high-end acoustic guitars, but that’s only because I’ve been playing a lot with other people this year, and my twenty-some year old main axe is hitting it’s limits, even after I’ve made a bunch of capacity-extending modifications over the years. Nor have a I particularly felt the need (beyond the occasional appreciative glance from afar – I’m not dead, you know!) to trade in the spouse for a newer model – I’m quite happy with the arrangement I have, thank you.

What that last paragraph means, I think, is that I’m not particularly stereotypical about middle age. I my brain still feels mostly young – I still watch cartoons, wear t-shirts with silly slogans on them, play games, enjoy riding bikes through the dirt…hell, I went to the comic shop yesterday, like I do every week. I feel no need to put aside childish things just because some outmoded societal construct says I should. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel the need to do any of those things in the previous paragraph – who knows?

But, I guess, I’ve been feeling some of the aches and pains of old-manhood – My stamina’s great, thanks to lots of cardio, but the knees and ankles suffer. I occasionally feel the urge to wave a cane at the kids and tell them to get off of my poor excuse for a lawn (while I wear an onion on my belt, because, you know…), because, despite having a teenager and an almost teenager in the house, I occasionally miss pop culture references, especially when they have to do with things that are “YouTube famous” or have anything to do with Harlem or Shaking.

I suppose I’m okay with that. Plus, you know, #39 (as in Tales of Suspense) is where Stan,Jack, Larry and Don invented Iron Man:

And Iron Man’s cool and stuff now, right?