Monday, July 02, 2012

Aging - Getting it all over with in youth


Message transmitted from mysterious sources in space, picked up on cable news:

Greeting Earthlings! I come from the Planet Zog, where we do things differently, and so much better.  Example:  We get our Alzheimers and osteoporosis and arthritis out of the way in our youth, so we can enjoy old age.  Isn’t that the fair way?  Have a heart attack in your teens, we say and have it done with.

Oh, we still have a fair amount of deaths from natural and unnatural causes. Not everyone survives childhood, but those that do have a chance to enjoy their retirement.  In contrast, you earthlings work your butts off for 50 years, get a gold watch and the next day, zap, the ticker quits.

We have a pretty good system of justice on Zog too. One that follows the natural order.  Our kids are too creaky and cripped up to commit violent crimes, and don’t yet have the savvy for the white-collar ones,  so by the time they age out of prime crime committing age (which coincidentally is the same as your prime TV watching age, which is why you are all complaining about nothing good on TV for anyone over forty), they’re starting to get in shape and appreciate all that life has to offer, without the pesky emotional roller coast ride of youth.  That is taken care by the body’s frailties in the early years.   

In youth, their minds are clear, their skin is good (one glitch, we have pimples in our old age, but compared with all that other stuff, it’s a fair trade off). Yes, we mature emotionally in much the same way as you do.  But we can’t do a lot about it because of the opposite way our bodies age.  This has the added benefit of keeping the population down.  There’s plenty of food to go around on Zog. 
And about TV.  Our shows are mainly geared toward the over-fifty crowd, who spends a lot of time skateboarding and such, and don’t really have time to zone out in front of the tube, so it has to be really really compelling for us to watch.  Young people are too busy trying to survive youth to sit around watching TV.    

Well, Earthlings, I just stopped in to say hello, got to jet off to finish my galactic tour.  Hope I haven’t depressed you.  You’ll soon forget everything I told you anyway; it’s built into your flawed genes. Catch you next millennium.