"42"

Precisely one Mad Monday ago, I turned 42.

No, I’ve never read the book. But I did watch the movie. It was terrible beyond imagination.

Regardless of where you might throw in your four score and 2 cents on towel-awareness in an era of social distancing, I am certain now that 42 is special. 

It is the precise ritual-of-existent-awareness at the bare crux of a one-or-two-year radius in which the likely mid-moment of your fallen-life-expectancy (give or take) is probable to come and go. 

Debate me on the nuances of the algorithms, but let’s not quibble: all things considered, at 42(ish) you stand in dire proximity to the existential epicenter of your own life’s relation to the mean! 

We probably call it “the mid-life crisis” because our best math teacher (God-bless her heart), was still never able to dictate into us “the mean” having much of any meaning. I think the most that I picked up is that “the mean” as a statistic is a very poor estimation of real life. Perhaps that was the reason 97% of us immediately discarded the concept too weird to bother understanding in the face of a competitor for truth like the (apparently) sensible “average.”

But that’s the point. The mean is outside the normal (often dead-wrong) “common” sense. That, correct me if I am wrong, is a big part of what the mean is for. It’s a place to gain a unique, but reliably accurate alt perspective. 

Not unlike a global pandemic. 

Or having your “Mean-Day” fall the day after Mother’s Day in the middle of a global pandemic….