Posts Tagged ‘aging’

I think it’s great, but some think history sphinx.

My buddy Franco is not elderly. Norman Lear was elderly. Franco is ancient. He’s older than dirt – literally. He’s so old he still suffers from hearing loss from standing too close to the original Big Bang. But more noteworthy is that he’s the only person with 24 pairs of chromosomes (instead of the usual 23) – a genetic mutation caused by a very tempting apple his mother Eve probably shouldn’t have eaten. Well, she was warned, but that’s another story.

And on the genes of that 24^th chromosome were pristine DNA strands that prevented Franco’s bodily tissues from ever aging; so he’s never gotten old. He’s like one big stem cell. In fact, when he submitted his saliva for genetic testing to 23 and Me, the findings revealed he was related to everyone, everywhere, all at once. As a result, he’s the answer to the question: Who’s your daddy?

Not one to let the rich premise of a preposterous story escape my clutches, I decided to ask Franco about his many and varied experiences, lo these many epochs. And he enthusiastically shared with me great and colorful historical anecdotes I’ve highlighted below:

Franco is So Ancient That…

1. He rented the last room at the Bethlehem Inn on Dec. 24^th, forcing Mary & Joseph to camp out in the manger
2. Franco had a platonic relationship…with Plato.
3. His favorite soup? ­– Primordial
4. He came to America via the Siberian-Alaskan land bridge (that is, once he got his Bering Strait)
5. He used to call Methuselah “Junior”
6. When a young Alfred Nobel won a church raffle in Sweden, it was Pastor Franco who presented him with the first ever Nobel Prize
7. At different times of his life, he’s eaten various alphabet soups teeming with cuneiform, Cyrillic or English letters. He didn’t care much for the Egyptian hieroglyph soup – “too many ankhs, not enough ibises.”
8. It was Franco’s idea to humanize his tribal leader Atilla by nicknaming him “the Hun”
9. Same thing with Vlad. When the murderous tyrant wanted to instill even greater fear in his perceived enemies, it was the fertile mind of Franco who came up with “The Impaler.” And it stuck, so to speak.
10. In addition to his platonic relationship with Plato, he had a tactile relationship with Play-Doh. Oh, how he loves his homonyms.

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1. I don’t know how it happens, but nowadays, no matter where I am, whenever I get naked, light bulbs automatically dim
2. To hell with aiming. When I get up to pee during the night, I sit on the pot.
3. My dermatologist says I have old-growth skin tags that are so ancient, they’ve become UNESCO World Preservation sites and, by law, cannot be removed
4. I must be slipping. Whenever I play catch, and my partner fakes the throw I wonder…where did the ball go? It takes me about 10 seconds to figure out they still have the ball.
5. I try to maintain a positive body image, but when I look in a mirror these days, I’m mostly pixilated.
6. You know those stupid 2 ½ minute pharmaceutical commercials? I record them.
7. I guess I’m non-binary now. Instead of seeing the world as a series of 1’s and 0’s, now I see it as a series of business and non-business days
8. I’m very proud of my well-formed nostrils. I’m just a Nostril-positive person. Although most people just think I’m nosey.
9. I’m already so “out there,” that if I take a Gummy, I actually get more sober
10. Even though I’m mostly bald now, I have the same amount of total hair I had when I was 20. It’s just redistributed amongst my ears, nostrils, eyebrows and back.
11. Nowadays when people point at something, I just look at the end of their finger
12. And finally, I realize I’m getting older because I don’t know any of the hosts on Saturday Night Live