Lunch with Tony
Tony said life is a hockey game. Three periods move quickly and are fraught with change. Birth to thirty years old is period 1. Thirty to sixty years old is period 2; sixty to ninety years are period 3. Hockey and life include overtime. At birth, the most important question Tony wanted answered was, "What kind of 30 year old do you want to be?" Newborn limitations postpone interrogation for ten years. When a fifth grader is asked, common answers include, "Thirty?! It's taken my entire life to get to ten." Tony's twenty year olds scoff, "Thirty?! That's old; I'll never be thirty." At thirty-two years old, in Tony's dining room, he told the author, "You're a very nice young man but you have jacked off your life thus far. We've spent an hour in conversation about the twenty-something you used to be. If no one interrupts, you'll spend the next decade trying to reproduce your twenties." Tony's lunchtime in...