Study-wise, this has been a rough week for me.
On Tuesday, I read in the newspaper that a new study has revealed that men’s brains deteriorate faster than women’s brains as they grow older, sometimes causing them to become prematurely grumpy. It is not yet known whether this occurs because men most often spend their adult years married to women or because men’s brains get such a workout during their lifetimes. Whatever the cause, I’m sure the psychiatrist who made this discovery won’t sleep till she gets to the bottom of this mystery.
But even more disturbing are the results of the study I read in the newspaper on Wednesday which say that left-handed people die a lot sooner than right-handed people – nine years earlier, to be exact. The best a left-handed person can expect out of this life is 66 years while right-handed people can go whistling merrily along until they’re 75.
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Researchers checked out 1,000 deaths and found that 13 per cent of people in their 20s are left-handed while only one percent of people in their 80s are left-handed, most of the lefties having died off by then.
Being a lifelong, left-handed 40-year-old, I am now confronted with the newly discovered knowledge that I’ve only got 26 years left, give or take a day. And being male, I can now also look forward to my brain deteriorating at a rapid rate in the approaching final few years.
This news might all be accepted calmly if it was not for the fact that it comes on the heels of so many other studies which have been unkind to people such as me over the years. For example, various statistics have shown that men live an average of seven fewer years than women. Therefore,
if you knock seven more years off the 26 I apparently have left because I’m left-handed, I can now look forward to only 19 more years.
Now, bachelors die five years earlier than married men and since I remained a bachelor until only recently, my calculator says I’d better take three more years off my lifespan, leaving me with a mere 16 years.
New studies are also suggesting that farmers are dying off a few years earlier than urban people because of the hard work, jostling on tractors, dust during harvests and exposure to chemical pesticides. Having spent the first half of my life on a farm, I believe I can conservatively count on four fewer years than my city cousins. That leaves me with 12.
Some studies say people who sleep on their left side where their heart is located will probably die off a couple of years earlier than people who sleep in any other position. As I am also guilty of that infraction, I believe my 12 years has now been reduced to 10.
Smokers, of course, die seven years earlier than non- smokers and having been a smoker for almost 20 years before I quit, I think it’s safe to say the 10 years I thought I had left has now dwindled down to three.
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These days, to make a living, I sit in front of a computer screen almost eight hours a day and to get over that, spend another hour or two in front of a TV in the evening. Some people are pretty sure the exposure to the radiation from these cathode-ray tubes lops another few months off your life. I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years so I think it’s a safe bet I’ll lose one year for my reward. This brings me down to two.
I think its a pretty sure thing that one of those other two years will fall prey to the scourges of global warming, the greenhouse effect and the hole in the ozone layer not to mention air and water pollution.
And no doubt my last, remaining year has been used up by my love for coffee.
Therefore, if my calculations are correct, I’ll be lucky to get this column finished.
No wonder I’ve gone prematurely grumpy.
©1991 Jim Hagarty
