A comedian proposes aging backwards: start old paying bills and dealing with back pain, end young drinking juice boxes and skateboarding. He riffs on modern annoyances like travel insurance and phone updates, then asks for a refund on life with more naps and fewer colonoscopies.
Chapters
I've done it. I've done it. I figured out the secret to life. Are you ready? It's a palindrome. Come out of the womb bald, wrinkly, and confused, and that's exactly how you go out. The start and the end are the same. In the middle is this life thing, which is mostly, as far as I've been able to tell, paying bills and wondering why your back hurts. I have a proposal. Let's commit some science funding to aging in reverse. We start life as old curmudgeons yelling at clouds, and then we end it as carefree toddlers eating sand at the beach. Instead of being rewarded for surviving 6 decades with arthritis and bifocals and the eternal mystery of "Why'd I walk into the kitchen again?" we'd get health as our parting gift. Youth as our retirement. Spend your last 10 years skateboarding, binge drinking juice boxes, falling in love 3 times a week. Because this current system is bonkers. When you're finally old enough to afford a boat, you have vertigo. When you have enough time to travel, you can't get travel insurance without a 5-hour phone call and a blood sacrifice. When you finally mastered patience, technology changes every 6 seconds and you can't unlock your phone without accidentally sending your family group chat a photo of your right ear. In a world that made sense, we would be born wise and tired and then gradually work backwards into a hot 25-year-old with great hair and better knees and then disappear in a puff of baby powder surrounded by giggles stuffed animals, someone spoon-feeding you baby food, which, don't lie to me, you would totally eat right now if you had some. So next time someone says, "Well, getting older is a gift," remind them that so is fruitcake. Nobody wants one of those. So yeah, I want my refund. Or at least a do-over. With more naps. And fewer colonoscopies. There are a great many young people in this school, Jim. They're all growing up.
