I come from a family with major mortality issues. Every couple years someone in the family died. My dad taught me to appreciate the moment more...one of the last things he said to me was, "Don't go nuts like you always do when I'm outta here." He was a wise man. Kind of like Yoda. Except taller. And less ear hair.
Anyway, I started thinking, what if... Besides my family history and how nuts the world has become, what if I only had twenty-four hours to live? And not like in a crappy riddle where you can rub the genie's lamp and ask for a hundred more wishes, but truly, what if I knew my time on this earth was up in twenty-four hours? Maybe my doctor told me I had some weird disease I got from his colonoscopy tools, or maybe Anthrax got popular again and a contestant on "1 VS 100" shook my hand with it. I wouldn't care about the tangible stuff -- settling business affairs, making sure there was nothing incriminating in my house to bite my legacy in the ass -- the hell with that, I've just been told I've got...
Twenty-four hours to live:
I gotta spend time with the people I love. My girlfriend, my daughters, my mother....Shit, what if they all read this? Should I see my daughters first, then my girlfriend, then my mother? I'm not neurosing over it. I'm gonna get all the people I love, go rent a private jet--this is no time to think about expense or the ozone -- Get out the Amex, shove all my women on a plane and fly west. That's right, west, to Hawaii, where I can gain three hours in paradise. (I'm assuming, for the purposes of this diatribe, that I get credit time the more west I travel.) But I do have to be realistic...I have to tell them all my situation. There's tears of course when I break the harsh news, 'cause I love them all and they love me, but it all turns into huge laughs once I start pouring the Dom and lighting up the Cohibas. Now, with travel time I'm still left with...
Twenty hours to live:
And I'm in Maui. We all get the best house on the beach we can on such short notice. Everyone's having a blast with hot Polynesian girls dancing on the sand -- We all eat a giant roasted island pig while watching a surfing instructor throw my mom out on the waves. She has the time of her life, wipes out violently, smashing her face on the rocks, but isn't hurt in any way -- we get it all on videotape and have it Fedex'd to "America's Funniest Home Videos," in hopes that after I'm gone she can win the ten thousand dollar prize. After a good laugh at the premise, we all get back on the plane. That little Maui trip left me with...
Seventeen hours to live:
And now we're enroute to Fiji. I've always wanted to go there and I'm on borrowed time, heading further west. It's a ten hour flight so we bring some of my favorite movies to enjoy, the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Lord of the Rings trilogies as well as Kill Bill 1 & 2 for the kids. They all enjoy an unlimited shellfish buffet while my mother sits reclining, icing her calves, still in recovery from her surfing adventure. My girlfriend and I go to the over-sized bathroom at the back of the plane to enjoy our last fleeting moments of romance as the Raider's of the Lost Arc theme booms in surround sound. We're thrown to the floor as the plane touches down in Suva, Fiji and I've got...
Seven hours to live:
A ten hour flight, and a fun flight, with the core group of people I love. I bound off the plane in exotic Fiji. The weather is amazing. We are greeted by hot Fiji goddesses who drape us all in island flowers and serve us fruity island drinks. My Blackberry's message alert goes off and I check it for some of my last emails. It's then that I notice that it's the next day here in Fiji. We didn't go back in time at all, instead, we moved nineteen hours AHEAD!!! If you go far enough west, you end up moving forward in time. You learn something new every day. I die instantly.