Some hypotheticals in life are silly -- who would win in 2012 Obama or Romney? who would win in a World Series the Cubs or the White Sox? what would life be like in Chicago if we didn't have winters?
Other hypotheticals are staggering -- what would it be like if John Lennon, Martin Lither King, Marilyn Monroe and John F Kennedy were still alive?
The staggering part is the way we would have to re-adjust and re-adapt to a world in which these icons of the 20th C would now be graying and aging in their 70s, 80s, and 90s respectively. I mean, think about it! What would it be like compelled to watch these young lions and lionesses of our youth systematically fading and failing just like us?
I'll tell you what.
It would be a dispossessing and disruptive sensation. Even worse than what is already happening as we gradually realize the authority-figures of our youth -- presidents, police, teachers, clergy -- are now younger than us.
What.....??
I for one can assure you, this turn of events is no easy matter to manage. When it happens to you, it is no longer simply a random hypothetical. It's a kind of brutal reality, my friend. So if John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe and John F Kennedy had not been cut down at their beautiful prime, their vibrant iconography in our lives would now be dimming just as they themselves dimmed.
Look, there's already enough reality to our lives. So how, for heaven's sake, would an aging but still breathing American male come to terms with a tucked and botoxed Marilyn celebrating her 85th birthday this month in the palmy confines of a Santa Barbara residency...?
Please, I shall not even try!
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