I wake up at 5 a.m. to feed the hors­es. Every day.

It start­ed dur­ing a hot spell. The mer­cury climbed into the 90’s by 10 each morn­ing, so we had to ride ear­ly to beat the heat. To give the hors­es time to eat their break­fast before we left the barn, they had to be fed by 6, but Mari­no, the man who feeds them for me, doesn’t show up until 8:30. My choic­es were to stay out of the sad­dle, force the hors­es to lug us around hun­gry and pissed off, or feed them myself.

It felt like I’d been asleep about ten min­utes when my iPhone’s night owl ring­tone woke me that first morn­ing. I crawled out of bed in the dark, dressed, and stag­gered down­stairs to the truck.

I stall five hors­es in two barns, which I named Olive and Her­bert for short­hand ref­er­ence. Olive is locat­ed across Long Val­ley Road from the Hid­den Hills Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter, a two-minute dri­ve from my house. Dawn broke as I parked in the lot next to the center’s swim­ming pool. A slim elder­ly woman wear­ing black gog­gles swam laps in a lane marked with a float­ing blue and red rope line. Grog­gy from the ear­ly rise, I sat comatose in the truck, watch­ing her slide through the water, slow and steady, up and back.

A shrill neigh broke the trance. Across the street, Jack­son, Lily, and Dol­ly stood in their turn-out cor­rals star­ing at my truck with their ears pricked for­ward, won­der­ing what Car­rot Man was doing there at 5:30. They watched me intent­ly as I climbed out of the truck and walked through the gate. When I head­ed to their stalls with an arm­load of hay, they began to cel­e­brate, pranc­ing and toss­ing their heads.

Jack­son is a sol­id chest­nut with a white blaze on his face and three white socks. He’s smart, well-trained, and a pro­fes­sion­al, reli­able ride. A big, beau­ti­ful paint with a white face and white splotch­es on her body, Dol­ly lives up to the name on her reg­is­tra­tion papers, ShesATotalDiva.

Drawn to Lily that morn­ing, I stood at her stall door and watched her eat. A gray flea-bit­ten (black speck­les) Azteca mare with a pret­ty mane and lush white tail, she bears deep phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal scars from her pre­vi­ous owner’s abuse. Because of injuries that didn’t heal right, she favors her left shoul­der and strug­gles on down­hill grades.

Lily raised her head and looked at me. She was afraid of me when I bought her. Now, her soul­ful eyes look at me with hard-won trust and a touch of love. All my hors­es tug at my heart, but some­times, like that morn­ing, Lily tugs a lit­tle harder.

I pulled myself away from Lily and drove to Her­bert. It sits on a hill­top a cou­ple hun­dred yards from Olive. Marge and Wil­son stood at the fence beside the road and watched Car­rot Man’s truck climb the steep dri­ve­way to the barn. When I opened the door to the feed room, they real­ized why I was there and gal­loped up the hill to their stalls.

Wil­son is a bay thor­ough­bred in his twen­ties, a good soul who tries his best to do what­ev­er you ask of him. I retired him from rid­ing when arthri­tis attacked his spine. In Jan­u­ary prob­lems with his front hooves got so bad I thought I’d have to put him down, but he res­cued me from that heart­break­ing deci­sion, mirac­u­lous­ly fight­ing his way back to good health under the care of a smart, inno­v­a­tive vet. I’ve writ­ten often in these pages about my friend­ship with Wil­son. See Rid­ing Wil­son, Stay with Me, and For the Love of Hors­es.

Wilson’s sta­ble­mate, Marge, is a lit­tle sor­rel quar­ter horse mare, perky, mis­chie­vous, and fun­ny. Despite her size, she tries to dom­i­nate oth­er hors­es, for­ev­er lay­ing back her ears and bar­ing her teeth at them, but her aggres­sive­ness doesn’t car­ry over to peo­ple. She loves my grand­chil­dren. And Car­rot Man, when he remem­bers to bring the carrots.

In the coop behind Her­bert, the roost­er crowed a greet­ing to the sun­rise and tall pines cast long blue shad­ows across my path as I walked back to the truck to go home.

The ride went well that day, and the ear­ly rise put me to sleep at 9 that night, which made the next morning’s 5 a.m. ring­tone less jarring.

I fed the hors­es every morn­ing dur­ing the hot spell. The morn­ing after it sub­sided, I didn’t set the alarm, but my body clock woke me at 5 any­way. I lay in the dark star­ing at moon-shad­ows, think­ing about the hors­es. Their body clocks had adjust­ed to the ear­ly feed­ing, too, I thought. They’d be dis­ap­point­ed when I didn’t show up. It didn’t sit well with me. I got up and drove to the barns. The next morn­ing, I fed them again. And the next.

Weeks passed. Sep­tem­ber brought short­er days. It remained pitch dark all the way through the feed­ing. I had to car­ry a flash­light to find the hay. The morn­ings grew cold in Octo­ber. I donned a heavy coat, gloves, and a muffler.

Six months into it now, my morn­ings have tak­en on a con­sis­tent rhythm. I rise at 5 and climb in the truck. My head­lights wash over Pedro feed­ing Tom­my and Zig­gy in a cor­ral on Round Mead­ow. He grins and waves to the crazy old man who feeds his own hors­es. I wave back. Steam ris­es from the heat­ed pool at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter. The gray-haired swim­ming lady slides through the water, up and back. She glances at me through her gog­gles and rais­es an arm mid-stroke in greet­ing. I tip my hat. I cross the street to the haystack. Jack­son nick­ers. Lily and Dol­ly prance. Manuel walks a tall roan down Long Val­ley Road in the moon­light. “Good morn­ing!” he shouts. I shout back. Marge and Wil­son stam­pede up the hill to Her­bert, plumes of vapor jet­ting from their nos­trils. The roost­er crows. I walk through pine-shad­ows to the truck and dri­ve home.

I nev­er miss a morn­ing. Even in the bit­ter cold, rain, or high winds, and once dur­ing a rare thun­der­storm, I feed the hors­es. I don’t have to do it. I still pay Mari­no for the ear­ly feed, but I don’t let him do his job. Some­times, espe­cial­ly on those rough weath­er days or when I’m not feel­ing well, I won­der why I’m out there.

Part of the rea­son may be a throw­back to my youth. When I was a teenag­er in White Hall, I helped a friend spread hay in the field for his cat­tle before dawn on cold win­ter morn­ings. He drove a truck pulling a trail­er into the pas­ture. A hun­dred cat­tle lum­bered toward us, low­ing, a dust­ing of snow rid­ing their backs, the lead cow, Horn, in front, the oth­ers string­ing out behind her. I stood in the trail­er-bed kick­ing hay­bales off the back end. One by one the cat­tle dropped out of line to feed. Some­thing about it – the low­ing cat­tle, the dis­ci­pline of the work, the seren­i­ty of the cold snowy dawn – cen­tered me and eased my ado­les­cent inse­cu­ri­ties, at least while I was there. The ghost of that old feel­ing some­times swirls around me before dawn at Her­bert and Olive.

Anoth­er rea­son I’m there may be a need to feel use­ful. In big law and big busi­ness, I worked long hours con­fronting myr­i­ad chal­lenges. Retire­ment was like drop­ping out of exis­tence. Sud­den­ly, no one need­ed me to do any­thing. I was lost for a while. I found a pur­pose in writ­ing, but it’s a soli­tary voca­tion. You live inside your head; you work because you want to; and no one real­ly needs you to tell your sto­ries. The hors­es need me. They depend on me to show up, and they’re glad to see me when I arrive.

Susan, who boards two paints in a barn off Round Mead­ow and the only oth­er own­er I know who feeds her own hors­es before dawn in Hid­den Hills, offered anoth­er rea­son. “It’s qui­et ear­ly in the morn­ing when no one’s around. It’s the best time to bond with your horses.”

These things all play a role in my ear­ly morn­ing reg­i­men, I guess, but I tend to over­think things. Cindy usu­al­ly cuts to the chase.

“I don’t under­stand why I get up every morn­ing to feed the hors­es,” I told her. “It’s Marino’s job. It makes no sense for me to do it.”

“It makes per­fect sense,” she said. “You love the hors­es. It makes you hap­py to start your day with them. That’s why you do it.”

I would nev­er have pre­dict­ed I’d be ris­ing at dawn every day with­out fail in my 76^th year to feed hors­es, but this is where I find myself today, and my auburn-haired blind date is right about why. I’m in a good place; it’s where I want to be; and it makes me happy.

On a cold win­ter day, our Hud­son pitched and rolled over a rut­ted red-clay road and stopped in front of giant box­wood bush­es flank­ing a brick walk­way. Dad cut the engine and we sat star­ing at a big old two-sto­ry farmhouse.

“How bad off is he?” Mom said.

“They had to move his bed down to the par­lor,” Dad said. “He’s too weak to climb the stairs to the bedroom.”

“You think he’ll get well this time?”

“I don’t know.”

Sit­ting in the back seat, I hung on every word. One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries is walk­ing with Dad and Great-grand­dad­dy through a mowed corn­field on a sun­ny fall day, dried corn husks crunch­ing under our tread. In his late twen­ties wear­ing a mus­tard-col­ored hunt­ing jack­et, Dad car­ried a shot­gun for bird hunt­ing. Great-grand­dad­dy was five-eight with a full head of snow-white hair and a han­dle­bar mous­tache, his back straight, his stom­ach flat. When we came to a three-rail fence, Dad climbed over it and reached back to lift me across. When he set me down, I looked up to see Great-grand­dad­dy jump off the top rail, land on his feet, and stride on ahead of us. Dad smiled. “Your Great-grand­dad­dy is one tough old boy,” he said to me. “Eighty-eight and strong as a horse.”

My great-grand­par­ents owned a tobac­co farm out­side Appo­mat­tox a cou­ple miles from Lee’s sur­ren­der to Grant at the home of Wilmer McLean, who had moved his fam­i­ly south to escape the Civ­il War when the Union Army shelled his farm in north­ern Vir­ginia in 1861 at the begin­ning of the con­flict, only to have the Yan­kees seize his Appo­mat­tox home for Gen­er­al Grant’s head­quar­ters in 1865 at the end of it.

Snap­shot mem­o­ries of our vis­its to my great-grand­par­ents’ farm have stayed with me through the years. Sleep­ing in a big feath­er bed, feed­ing chick­ens and gath­er­ing eggs with Great-grand­ma, a bro­ken-down Mod­el A Ford squat­ting in a spi­der-webbed cor­ner of a shed, a snake’s skin nailed to the weath­ered planks of an old barn, ele­phant-ear-sized tobac­co leaves hang­ing from its rafters, a tall coal-black horse feed­ing on hay in his stall.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see Great-grand­dad­dy dressed in a three-piece black suit sit­ting tall in the sad­dle on that big roan. I remem­ber him walk­ing me up the porch steps, his cal­loused hand grip­ping my hand so tight­ly it was all I could do not to cry out in pain. Also embla­zoned in my mem­o­ry is the time he met us at the foot of the steps when we arrived, picked me up like I weighed noth­ing, held me in his arms, and looked at me grave­ly. “Ken­neth William Oder,” he said in a grav­el­ly voice.

In a pho­to­graph Mom took in 1947 when I was four months old, Dad is seat­ed in a chair hold­ing me. Behind him stand my Grand­dad­dy and my Great-grand­dad­dy. Dad and Grand­dad­dy are smil­ing. Great-granddaddy’s expres­sion is stern, the same grave look he gave me a few years lat­er when he picked me up and said my full name. On the back of the pho­to Mom wrote, “Oder fam­i­ly, 4 gen­er­a­tions.” Look­ing back on it now with the per­spec­tive of age, I think his expres­sion con­veyed pride, pride in head­ing up the family’s four gen­er­a­tions and pride in me, not because of any­thing I’d done, but sim­ply because I exist­ed, a great-grand­son he’d lived long enough to hold in his arms.

We lived near York­town in those days. The trip from our house to Appo­mat­tox trav­eled over wind­ing coun­try back roads. The rides were long and bor­ing for me, but when Dad talked to Mom about Great-grand­dad­dy, I perked up.

He had lived on the Appo­mat­tox farm all his life, Dad said. His father was a wheel­wright in Lynch­burg when he met Ari­an­na Cheatham. They mar­ried, bought the nine­ty-acre farm, and raised six sons on it. Great-grand­dad­dy was the third son, born in 1862 dur­ing the Civ­il War. His broth­ers left the farm when they grew up, but he stayed on. After his father’s death, he bought out their inher­it­ed inter­ests, mar­ried Lizzie Cole­man, a daugh­ter of the Coun­ty Sher­iff, and they farmed the land for the next half-century.

Dad told sto­ries about Great-granddaddy’s strength and fear­less­ness. He once killed a cop­per­head by pick­ing it up by its tail and crack­ing it like a whip. He walked tire­less­ly behind a horse plow­ing fields from sunup to sun­down. He tossed around bales of hay like they were match­box­es and lift­ed stalks of tobac­co like they were lit­tle twigs. He nev­er drank a drop of liquor; he nev­er smoked a cig­a­rette; and he went to church every Sunday.

Some­where along the way, the old man became an icon­ic hero in my tod­dler mind. He was invin­ci­ble, I thought. He’d live to be 100. Maybe even older.

So, when we sat in our Hud­son star­ing at the old farm­house that cold morn­ing, I knew Great-grand­dad­dy would get well, despite what Dad said.

When we walked in the par­lor, Great-grand­dad­dy sat in a rock­er in front of a big bed, wear­ing long-john under­wear and mud­dy black work boots with a shawl draped across his shoul­ders. His face was pale; his eyes rheumy.

Dad leaned over and hugged him. “You look good, Granddaddy!”

Mom kissed him on the fore­head and laughed. “You look mighty fine. I bet you been actin’ like you’re sick just to get attention!”

He didn’t respond to Mom and Dad. He didn’t smile. He didn’t return their hugs. I touched his knee, but he didn’t look at me.

Mom and Dad sat in straight-backed cane chairs near the wood­stove. I sat in a lit­tle rock­ing chair between them. Great-grand­ma sat next to the old man. She apol­o­gized for his appear­ance. She said he’d want­ed to put on his Sun­day go-to-church suit before we came, but he wasn’t strong enough to pull on his pants and she couldn’t man­age dress­ing him by her­self. It took all her strength just to help him out of bed to the rock­ing chair.

While she talked, I stared hard at Great-grand­dad­dy. He wheezed with every labored breath, his shoul­ders slumped, his eyes downcast.

“He tries to get up on his feet,” Great-grand­ma said, “but he can’t do no good. He can’t walk. Can’t take a step.”

As she spoke, Great-grand­dad­dy raised his head and looked at me. A slight smile lift­ed the cor­ners of his snow-white moustache.

I recall only dis­joint­ed images of what hap­pened after that, but Mom remem­bered every detail and told the sto­ry every chance she got.

I walked over to the old man. “It’s not true you can’t walk. You’re my Great-grand­dad­dy. You can do any­thing.” I grabbed the fin­gers of his big rough hand with both my hands and pulled on him. “Come on, Great-grand­dad­dy! Get up! You can walk! I know you can!”

Grunt­ing and strain­ing against his weight, I pulled as hard as I could. “Stand up, Great-grand­dad­dy!” He leaned for­ward uncer­tain­ly, tried to stand, but fell back. I pulled hard­er. He rocked his chair for­ward, swung his head out over his knees, and stood up slow­ly and unsteadily.

I tugged him toward the oppo­site wall. He took a fal­ter­ing step, right­ed him­self, and took anoth­er. And anoth­er. We made it across the room. I turned and pulled him back toward Great-grand­ma. He stag­gered along behind me. When we got to her, I turned and pulled him toward the oppo­site wall again. Halfway across I broke into a run. He shuf­fled along to keep up with me, his boots clomp­ing on the plank floor. We ran back and forth three or four times before I final­ly tired out and let go of him.

He col­lapsed in the rock­er, gasp­ing for air, every breath rat­tling in his chest like mar­bles bang­ing around inside a tin can.

I jumped up and down in front of him, cheer­ing. “I knew you could do it, Great-grand­dad­dy! I knew you could do it!”

He looked at me with big tears rolling down his cheeks and that slight smile fight­ing its way through.

He got well short­ly after our visit.

It wasn’t part of Mom’s sto­ry, but I remem­ber Great-grand­ma star­ing at me wide-eyed that day. She was a woman of faith. She believed God had worked a heal­ing mir­a­cle through me. Mom thought so, too.

When I was a lit­tle boy, I didn’t think it was a mir­a­cle. I believed Great-grandad­dy could do any­thing, so I wasn’t sur­prised when he stood and walked, but as I lis­tened to Mom tell the sto­ry over the years, I came to real­ize it was, at a min­i­mum, a mir­a­cle of courage, rock-hard grit, and indomitabil­i­ty. Run­ning across that room almost killed him, but he refused to let me down no mat­ter what it cost him.

He wasn’t invin­ci­ble. He didn’t make it to 100. He died of heart fail­ure at 92. No one can beat time for­ev­er, but he sure-to-God gave old age a good long hard fight.

Thomas William Oder (1862–1954). My Great-grand­dad­dy. A strong man of good char­ac­ter and iron will. A role mod­el for a wor­ship­ful tod­dler. One tough old boy.

One morn­ing a cou­ple of days before my 74^th birth­day, I stepped on some­thing par­tial­ly buried in the dirt in my horse cor­ral. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. A porce­lain round wafer the size of a lol­lipop mount­ed on a five-inch-long met­al rod. Etched in black let­ters on its off-white sur­face: “NOT DEAD YET.”

I don’t know the sto­ry behind its wry mes­sage, who lost it in the cor­ral, or what its intend­ed pur­pose may have been, but its serendip­i­tous dis­cov­ery right before a high-num­bered birth­day seemed a good omen.

I took it home, staked it in the cen­ter of a saucer-sized pie, and post­ed a pho­to of it on Face­book under the com­ment, “Birth­days at this age are fun, ain’t they?”

It seemed to hit a chord, espe­cial­ly with the “mature” crowd, gar­ner­ing a bunch of likes and birth­day wish­es. Some weren’t so encour­ag­ing. One of my for­mer Lath­am law part­ners wrote, “You have to won­der how many are bewil­dered you are not dead yet.” Anoth­er Lath­am guy said, “Keep doing these birth­days long enough and you will be dead.”

High-pow­ered lawyers can be a pain in the butt. Why I left Lath­am to become a cab­bage vendor.

Undaunt­ed, I ate the pie and stashed the porce­lain lol­lipop in my desk drawer.

On my 75^th birth­day, I used it to save mon­ey on birth­day-cake can­dles. That year I also dis­cov­ered an arti­cle by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a renowned oncol­o­gist, bioethi­cist, and health­care advis­er to Pres­i­dents Oba­ma and Biden, enti­tled Why I Hope to Die at 75, in which he argues the world would be a bet­ter place if he and the rest of us kicked the buck­et at the three-quar­ter-cen­tu­ry mark. Accord­ing to him, at age 75 most of us head into a steep phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive decline. No longer capa­ble of mak­ing valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety, we live on only to inflict crush­ing emo­tion­al and finan­cial bur­dens on our loved ones.

As a fresh­ly mint­ed mem­ber of the 75 club, I took offense and wrote a blog try­ing to rebut Dr. Zeke’s premise. See Stay­ing Alive at 75.

My 76^th birth­day rolled on by this month. One year past Dr. Zeke’s sell-by date, I haven’t plunged into a steep phys­i­cal decline. In fact, I’m in bet­ter shape now than I was ten years ago. Back then, I expe­ri­enced a sud­den weight gain. My rate of metab­o­lism slowed with age to the point that a banana slug could crawl over a field of jagged boul­ders faster than I could burn calo­ries. I could gain ten pounds inhal­ing the fumes com­ing off a hot pizza.

My doc­tor told me to go on a diet. Diets for my age group fol­low three basic prin­ci­ples: If it tastes good, you can’t eat it; if it tastes bad, you can only eat micro-por­tions of it; and if you drink any­thing con­tain­ing alco­hol, sug­ar, caf­feine, salt, mer­cury, lac­tic acid, fruc­tose, gluten, or arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, it’ll kill you. You can eat lim­it­ed amounts of raw let­tuce, card­board-fla­vored sug­ar­less oat­meal, organ­ic non-fat plain yogurt, and noth­ing else. The good news is you can wash it down with as much water as you want, as long as it’s dis­tilled or boiled.

I couldn’t do it. Sug­ar-glazed donuts, fam­i­ly-sized bags of Dori­tos, Big Macs with large fries, and six­packs of Coors Light called out to me with siren songs I couldn’t resist. I went back to the doc­tor and con­fessed my eat­ing binges.

“You’ll become Jab­ba The Hut,” she said.

“I don’t care. I can’t eat piles of green leaves and bowls of por­ridge for the rest of my life. There has to be anoth­er way.”

My only alter­na­tive, she said, was to burn off the calo­ries. She pre­scribed a rig­or­ous exer­cise program.

I set up an in-home work­out area with an exer­cise ball, bar­bells, dumb­bells, ket­tle bells, resis­tance straps, and a weight bench. Three times a week, I jumped around, sweat­ed, and grunt­ed a lot. A few pounds came off, but the scales wouldn’t budge lower.

I hired a phys­i­cal train­er. She ratio­nal­ized my weight-lift­ing rou­tine and intro­duced me to bal­ance exer­cis­es. Falls are the lead­ing cause of injury and deaths for my age group. Every sec­ond of every day, some­one over 65 falls; 36 mil­lion falls per year; 32,000 deaths. Prac­tic­ing bal­ance reduces that risk, but it also gives you a good work­out. Try stand­ing on one foot for six­ty sec­onds. If you can do it with­out tip­ping over (most peo­ple over 65 can­not), your leg mus­cles will feel it big time.

My train­er incor­po­rat­ed a reg­i­men of chal­leng­ing bal­ance exer­cis­es into my rou­tine, but I still couldn’t hit my tar­get­ed weight. We added dai­ly walks. Walk­ing thir­ty min­utes burns 150 calo­ries and improves car­dio­vas­cu­lar health. I walk with my dog, P.D. Along with its weight loss ben­e­fits, stud­ies show dog-walk­ing is relax­ing and reduces stress. Appar­ent­ly, P.D.’s approach to walks was not includ­ed in these stud­ies. He has two gears, sub-low, where he stops to pon­der a scent for three hours, and for­mu­la-race-car high, dur­ing which he runs like the wind, jerk­ing my arm out of my shoul­der sock­et and drag­ging me on my bel­ly through bri­ar patch­es. Nev­er­the­less, when my walks with P.D. don’t esca­late into a near-death expe­ri­ence, they burn fat cells.

In the mid­dle of all this, I took up horse­back rid­ing. I didn’t turn to rid­ing for weight con­trol, but it turned out to be a big help. Groom­ing the hors­es, tack­ing them up, and work­ing around the barn shed weight, and rid­ing works the core, abs, pelvis, legs, and arms. Rid­ing at a walk burns 300 calo­ries an hour. You can burn 700 calo­ries at a gal­lop, but gal­lop­ing can also kill you. I ride most­ly at a walk.

With all that activ­i­ty, instead of expe­ri­enc­ing the phys­i­cal decline Dr. Zeke pre­dict­ed at age 75, my phys­i­cal con­di­tion improved greatly.

On the cog­ni­tive front, I’m in rea­son­ably good shape, too, although I’ll admit I’ve noticed a few minor issues. Vex­ing ques­tions I nev­er con­sid­ered a few years ago now con­sume an ever-grow­ing amount of my time. Puz­zling impon­der­ables, such as “Why did I walk into this room?” And “What day is it?”

I also tend to lose more stuff. Some­times in plain sight. Like the time I searched high and low for my cell phone when it was in my left hand, or the occa­sions when I couldn’t find my read­ing glass­es while they were perched on the end of my nose. But hey, these inci­dents are rare, occur­ring on aver­age less than once an hour. (I don’t include in this count all those times I lost my car keys. After all, it’s not my fault some wise-ass keeps sneak­ing into the house and hid­ing them in the refrigerator.)

And the rumors that I’m los­ing my mar­bles are flat-out false. It’s true I talk to P.D. So what? I’ve always talked to dogs, and I know I’m not nuts because no dog has ever talked back to me.

Okay, so the hors­es talk to me, but that doesn’t mean any­thing. It’s not a crazy Mr. Ed thing. The hors­es don’t vocal­ize. They con­verse tele­path­i­cal­ly, and they only express sim­ple con­cepts, like “You brought the car­rots, right?” And, ”If you didn’t bring the car­rots, why are you here?” I’ve nev­er had an extend­ed com­pli­cat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a horse. Except that time when Jack­son asked me what was wrong and I told him I lost my car keys and he told me to look in the lit­tle refrig­er­a­tor in the tack room and so, of course, I thanked him when I found them in there and he said you’re wel­come, but there’s noth­ing strange about that because Jackson’s an excep­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent horse, and it only hap­pened that one time.

So, no thanks, Dr. Zeke! I’m not buy­ing what you’re sell­ing. Here I am at 76, a full year beyond your drop-dead date, and I’m in great shape phys­i­cal­ly (although gen­er­al­ly exhaust­ed and some­times seri­ous­ly injured), men­tal­ly as sharp as a razor (even if I don’t always know where I am, why I’m there, or why my car keys are in the refrig­er­a­tor), and plan­ning to bank a ton of mon­ey I’ll save on birth­day can­dles with my lol­lipop wafer over the next quar­ter cen­tu­ry, when at 101 I will remain dogged­ly and defi­ant­ly Not Dead Yet.