Feature Article
A Call To Arms: Boycott Aging
by Ismael Manzano
Greetings to my thousand fans out there—minus nine-hundred and ninety-nine—today I come to you hat in hand, with a personal request. I implore you, entreat you—can you tell I’m using a thesaurus?—to band together in my call for a boycott of aging. My reasons for this boycott? Simple. In September, on the eleventh day of the month, I will be turning thirty, and I’ve decided that that is just not acceptable! This is my show! I’m the star of it! I’m not supposed to age and fade out and make room for some younger version of me to take my place! Not before I’m ready! Not before I say so!...Did that make me sound kind of crazy—delusional? Sorry…someone noticed some gray in my hair.
Aging was never something I had intended to do. I had planned to stumble upon some fountain of youth that would allow me to be as I am for as long as I choose, but it seems that that old bastard Time has successfully conspired to ruin my plans. So, barring a miracle, I’ve decided that I can not afford to wait for fate to intervene. I call to you all to lend your assistance in forcing Time to stand still.
But I’m not just doing this for me. No. This is for you all now. Join me in this boycott and all of us will reap the benefits. Think about it. We are more than six billion and counting on this planet; we don’t need anymore people. Personally, I think that this generation, this time period offers the best diversity, the best trends, and the best opportunities of the past sixty-five billion years. We don’t need to progress any further for a while. If we all stayed exactly as we are now, what would be the harm in that? It would give us all a chance to do things we would not have had the opportunity to do with old Time holding the reins. Depose Time and we can live practically immortal for as long as we cared to do so, subject to death only when our bodies were too injured to sustain life. If a few million of us die within the first century or two, it won’t really adversely affect the populations. Hell, it’ll be to the benefit of our environment. The birth rate and the death rate are pretty much even right now, but in a few years, that might change and we’ll be vastly over populated.
Why now and not a year ago, two years ago or a decade ago, you might ask? Well, I’m pretty happy being twenty-nine. I don’t want to get any older. Thirty sounds so much worse than twenty-nine. I’m healthy, in decent shape, I look as good if not better than I have in my life so far—no acne, no awkward growth spurts—I’m pretty level headed now, I know who I am and what I want, and I’m taking steps to achieving my goals. My only problem, I don’t know where I’ll be or in what condition I’ll be in if and when I finally achieve those goals. Hell, what fun is it to publish a book, buy a house, earn a good living and be able to indulge in some hobbies, if by the time I do it, I’m so old, all I can do is complain about how long it took me so long to get what I want? I want to be able to live my dreams and know that I have more time ahead of me to enjoy it than behind me.
I’m sure some of you can agree with this. But this boycott will not just benefit me. Think of the advantages of never aging. Teenagers, you’ll get to keep your good bodies, keep all that energy… and keep on having lots of sex.
Women with babies, you get to keep your little bundle of joy for hundreds of years. Look at that face! Look at that little face!
Scientists and college students will have all the time in the world to learn all they need and want to learn. Doctors, a seven year internships at a hospital will seem like nothing when you take into account that you’ll have hundreds of years to practice your craft—and get paid for it.
Everyone can, literally, change careers at any point in their life. You can try one path, test it out for about fifty years and then, if you get bored with it or decide that it was the wrong path, try something different. If done right, eventually, the entire world will be super-educated.
You won’t have to worry about Social Security running out, because you won’t have to ever retire.
As for those who are already retired or elderly…well, sorry. You’re pretty much f#*$ed, but hey, you can’t halt time without screwing over the generation that didn’t think about this first.
And to all the pregnant women, in the middle morning sickness, sorry, but…pat your belly and wait for those above mentioned scientist to come up with a way to keep you from throwing up all day. It’s bound to happen.
Now for those of you who are still skeptical, know that this doesn’t have to be a permanent boycott, just until I learn all that I need to and have done all that I’m going to and am bored with it all. Then you can all go back to growing old and dying and whatever else it is that you were doing before.
So, scientists around the world put your collective heads together and come up with a way to kick that old bastard Time in the ass and get him to roll over like the whipped and mewling bitch he’s trying to turn each and every one of us into—like he deserves to be. Or, better yet, will someone construct that time machine that people have been trying to make since the first caveman clubbed and dragged off the mate of his friend in the next cave and regretted it in the morning.
Until then…hurry up! You have until September!! Don’t let Time cancel my show!
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