Feeling My Mortality, LOL

This isn’t really how I picture Charley Davidson, the sexy, funny Grimm Reaper in Darynda Jones’s soon-to-be 13-book series. In my mind, Charley carries a bit more weight. Nonetheless, I do feel the Reaper’s chilly breath on the back of my neck more that I used to. Photo by: California Costumes

Last year, I fell ill just after Thanksgiving. I was sicker than I remember being in years. Then I fell ill again on a return from a Christmas vacation in Ruidoso. All of this illness has me feeling my mortality, but since I am a big fan of Dad Jokes—and being a dad who is approaching his sixtieth birthday—a couple of them came to my mind during recovery. I can’t help it. I come from a long line of folks who tell jokes on their death beds.

The first of these jokes has to do with my eventual reaction to cold medicines. Over the years I have noticed a fairly standard progression as the disease works its way through my body and eventually out of it.

Q: What is the scariest thing about being sick?

A: Realizing you have to sneeze and the drugs you’re on give you the runs.

The second Dad Joke comes from a much more humiliating realization.

Q: What is the saddest thing about getting older?

A: Realizing that you now consider coffee a recreational drug.

That last one would make Charley Davidson, who once referred to coffee as “the nectar of the gods,” very sad.