Life, the Universe and Everything

Mention the number 42 to my wife and she'll instinctively roll her eyes. That's because I spent the first five years of our relationship nudging her every time those simple digits crossed our path. Bank statements, billboards, cereal boxes: I never failed to acknowledge the fact that the total sum of six times seven was haunting our every step. Blame Douglas Adams. In his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - a whole series of books I devoured throughout my early teens, he writes of a hyperintelligent race of beings who seek the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Building a supercomputer named Deep Thought, they wait seven and a half million years for the machine to spit out the damn answer. That answer it eventually comes up with, is 42. The Ultimate Question however, remains unclear...

I chuckled when I first read that, then proceeded to live an unenlightened life - until - I fell under the spell of these two jokers; half-mad cerebral hoodlums who more than convinced me 1) the Power of 42 was real, 2) Milwaukee's Best was rotgut suitable for any occasion and that 3) Oingo-Boingo was a band to be taken very seriously. Rick Dennis and Steve Bottoms were (hell, still are) two of the most brilliant guys I've ever pursued truancy with. Under their tutelage I escaped the small-minded shackles of my rural crossroads community, stretched my own burgeoning intellect and partied like it was 1999 - which it wouldn't be for a dozen more years.

In that time, life accelerated. Kids, college, military service, wives and new careers... all conspired to cast our group of brainy bon vivants to the farthest reaches of the contiguous U.S. Though I didn't see my high school gurus even as often as I could have, I wear their influence to this day - most noticeably in my undying affection for the sum of the totient function for the first eleven integers. I'm not saying the number on Jackie Robinson' retired jersey has any mystical qualities, or that it's followed me around all these years, but I can without shame tell you that 42 was, is and always will be my favorite number. What Rick and Steve think I ain't so sure; whenever I see them Rick bangs out endless Beatles tunes on his grand piano and Steve explains how organized religion is really just an opiate of the masses foisted upon mankind by a shadowy cabal of theological underlords - ENOUGH! Can't we talk about the funny numbers again?

Apparently not, for you can never go home again- which, when you're from the pitiable village of Goldsboro, North Carolina, ain't such a bad thing. But the damndest thing happened during my self-imposed exile...life. Like Gary Dean himself once warned, I went from being the youngest guy in the newsroom to one of the oldest. It's not been a wholly unpleasant trip. I still love my job (in theory), am excited about the seismeic shift looming in that chosen field and far more importantly, have a wonderful family that allows me to sleep inside nine out of ten nights. On top of all that, the ladies in my life abide my keyboard compulsion, knowing for whatever reason it keeps me less crabby. That means alot, for 2009 is well underway and I'm already behind on a few of key schemes. I want to be a better Dad and a more thoughtful husband this year, I wanna make potent television all by lonesome and once every couple of weeks, write something semi-important. Too often lately, I've allowed self-doubt to thwart my grander ambitions. If that's ever to stop, this is the year. After all, I just turned 42.

Hope the wife understands...