perfidy

Just like most other people, I tend to lose track of the days as I age.

It's not out of a desire to retain my yoot, clutching it well past the time when it's no longer OK to wear t-shirts advertising liquor brands. I made peace with aging and maturity awhile ago. Still stings sometimes, but fighting it is so pathetic and sad, and anyway, without getting too Holden Caulfield about it, no one likes a phony.

So we get on with our lives, work our jobs and and generate debt and make genetic replicants of ourselves, and while we all know the day (usually) and the date (after some reflection), we just lose the single days, flushed downstream in the time torrent with our last jobs, our old debt, and the baby pictures of grown children.

Occasionally we get a reminder that really hits home how far we've come, that makes us pop our heads above the time stream, look around, and say "Oh, is that where we are", then are overwhelmed by the weight of passing years. In my case, it is a detail- a turn of phrase, a scent (no, really), or, like today, a number.

As of today, the euro is worth $1.43. When I was stationed in Germany, a doillar was worth about 1.40 deutschmarks. I don't recall the exchange rate getting higher than about DM1.37 or so, but a few pennies here, some pfennigs there, and close enough.

So with the relationship inverted, for some reason that triggered my temporal awareness, and the rest of the day I will be thinking about how that year is very nearly the median of my lifespan thus far.