We must not let our prejudices become our foundations...

... such that when our convictions are challenged, so too are we.

A Little Brent Tilton From: 1979 in a city called San Diego.

I sat on the couch with the TV on, wondering what it was that just passed over my mind. It wasn't startling. It was more like something relatively innocent just stepped its foot into some sort of darkness and then went to go hide behind a tree too small to conceal its shape for doing something it thought was wrong, but didn't know why. It was like a thought pleading with me to come say I wasn't mad at it and that everything was okay.

I don't remember what the commercial was about, but the actor pitching whatever product it was had just finished declaring his disbelief that at 50, he had recently suffered from a heart attack...

That's when the little boy from that day passed me like a shadow. Not the kind of melodramtic, self sorry shadow of cliche, but the kind that crosses your body when a friend steps between you and a lamp and then sits down on the far end of the couch and continues the conversation you were just having before he went to go refill his glass. There it was, damn near clear as day in my mind I was looking right back into the eyes of one of my own thoughts and asking it why the hell I just got excited at the idea that someday I'm going to have to start seriously considering what death at the hands of old age is going be like.

I don't know how old I was at the time, probably 6 or 7 because I specifically remember getting relief out of the thought that I still had a few years to go before I was even in the double digits yet. But I can recall like it just happened five minutes ago the first time my imagination scared me with something much more terrible than the monsters in the closet it was used to conjuring up for my enjoyment.

One day I'm going to wake up and realize that I'm an old man. And frankly, that scares the shit out of me.