Casual
BROOKS, DAVID
Casual THE LAST MAN TO DIE It's perfectly obvious that by the time I am 70, I'll be a museum piece. In the first place, I am going to be the last balding man in America. Scientists are clearly on...
...I see myself dying of cancer on the day that cancer is cured...
...When I wear them to work, my bosses (who will be young, hungry types with sharp eyes and thick hair) will look at my spectacles as charming archaisms...
...Her glasses are gone...
...She went in to the office, which has one of those trust-enhancing names like Futuro-Lazo-Tech Associates...
...Second, I've never had a pair of glasses that fit properly, so I'm constantly pushing them back up my nose...
...He couldn't keep up with the times...
...Her contacts are gone...
...I'll be looking down at them from heaven and I still won't be able to see a damn thing...
...I have this notion that most of the remarkable events of history can be explained by the fact that most of the people involved in them couldn't see what they were doing...
...You'll be able to slather a little dab of fluoridated Rogaine on your gums and you'll have your same 20-year-old hair when you're collecting Social Security...
...Pretty soon, there will be anti-baldness shampoos, pills, and toothpaste...
...She sat in a chair for five minutes...
...If he'd only held on for a few more days...
...This gesture has become so ingrained that I sometimes do it in the shower, when I'm not wearing glasses, and I end up poking myself in the eye...
...Go to any ancient battlefield where a brave army made a heroic charge...
...A doctor came in with his Popeil's Pocket Cornea-Matic, carved up her eyes while reminiscing about his boyhood in Bangladesh, and—presto!—she came out with perfect vision...
...They'll get to the point where they'll start drawing liver spots on their hands as part of some retro fashion statement...
...Anyway, come 2030, eyeglasses will look about as contemporary as a pince-nez...
...I once saw a chart in the Economist on medical advances that predicted cancer would be cured around 2040...
...Not only will this accomplishment vastly overshadow my obituary...
...It'll be too late for me...
...They'll get romantic about the good old days they never knew, when people said "please" and "thank you" and when Americans were unburdened by excessive peripheral vision...
...These will be people buffed up with genetic therapy...
...I will bore my future colleagues with these theories, but they won't care, because nearsight-edness will have gone the way of polio...
...Every few days I come across a formerly bespectacled friend who has just come back from her laser job...
...And she's beaming about it...
...When I walk down the street, children will stop and wonder what happened to my head...
...Scientists are clearly on the verge of stopping hair loss...
...The new immortals will lean over my coffin and they'll sigh, "It's just as well...
...So if my wife accuses me of ogling young women in bathing suits, I can accurately respond that I'm just peering around trying to find the ocean...
...They will have as little experience with bald spots as kids today have with typewriters...
...You think Henry V could have urged his men up the hill at Agincourt if they'd been able to see the French weapons...
...People will flock to my funeral just to see what a corpse looks like...
...DAVID BROOKS...
...You realize that when the army set off on this charge, many of the troops had no idea of what was in front of them...
...It's also clear that I'm going to be the last person to die...
...Second, I'll be the last nearsighted person in America...
...it's going to cause a lot of people at my funeral to say, "Isn't it sad...
...This habit is too ingrained to break...
...You'll see mothers with five kids with their breasts bouncing around their chins...
...Third, I don't wear my glasses at the beach, having lost more than my fair share of eyewear in the surf...
...I don't know how the chart-makers knew this, but they work for the Economist so they must have gone to Oxford...
...Now she looks up into the night sky and sees galaxies the Hubble Telescope can't find...
...Now, if you are lucky enough to be nearsighted, take off your glasses...
...This means that in 40 years no one but me will wear glasses...
...Anyway, 2040 is just about when I am due to kick off, actuarially...
...Then they'll accidentally shed some of their abundant hair onto my body...
...No way...
...And when they feel a little ache or pain coming on, they'll just make a pit stop at the strip mall genetic therapy doctor (who used to do laser surgery until nearsightedness disappeared) for a hormone cocktail...
...I'm not going to have the surgery, for three reasons: First, when I'm not wearing my glasses I instinctively squint...
...I'll try to give them my eyeglasses theory of history...
...She describes the experience: She heard an ad from a clinic offering cheap laser surgery plus a free set of Ginsu knives...
...Women will be so pumped with anti-aging DNA that every time they have a child, their bodies will actually get firmer...
...Eye surgery would endanger my marriage...
Vol. 6 • July 2001 • No. 41
