43

I was born on a Friday 15,706 days ago. I've lived 516 months or 2,243 weeks or 376,944 hours or 22,616,640 minutes or 1,356,998,400 seconds from the moment of my birth to exactly 43 years later. And I still can't hold my breath any longer than 90 seconds. If I were a dog I'd be 185 years old. (using the old conventional wisdom of dog/human years I'd be 301.) I don't know how old I'd be if I was a cat, or an elephant or llama or cock roach. I've always wondered how otter years work.

I was born the Zodiac year of the horse in a small Kentucky town in a rural Catholic hospital. That's back when it was run by nuns in their full nun garb. I don't remember a thing about that day, but I do remember being back there when my little brother was born. Those sisters were bitter. It was a mission work that served lots and lots of families in the hills and hollows of the area. We lived in Richmond, which really wasn't a hill or a hollow, but it was only a half hour or so away and Mom liked the care she got from the sisterhood. So my very first breath was Catholic air.

On that day Lyndon Johnson lived in the White House. He was a Democrat. Ned Breathitt was my governor. He was a Democrat too.

The big international news on the day I was born was about Buddhists in South Vietnam protesting that the new government hadn't set a date for free elections. I'll bet Walter Cronkite didn't break in for that one.

1966 and MCMLXVI are one in the same. A lot happened that year.

Adam West was Batman. Star Trek started. So did Hollywood Squares, The Monkees and Mission Impossible. The Sound of Music was hitting big.

Man of La Mancha owned Broadway and the Tonys.

Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, the Mamas and the Papas, Ray Charles and Porter Wagoner racked up at the Grammys. Two days after I was born Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Scofield were crowned queen and king of the Oscars. The blowout movies were A Man For All Seasons and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

My team, the Kentucky Wildcats, faced Texas Western for the NCAA basketball title in College Park, Maryland. UK Coach Adolph Rupp started five white guys. TX Western's Don Haskins started five black guys. The Miners beat the Cats by seven points. Sad for us UK fans, but great for African American athletes since the upset motivated colleges to start more aggressively recruiting racial minorities.

Depending on who you ask, Notre Dame was the school to beat on the football field. Baltimore was the World Series champ, Boston took the NBA, and Green Bay won the Super Bowl. (Vince Lombardi's third straight win!) Kauai King wore the Derby roses.

There were lots of famous people born in 1966. People like Patrick Dempsey, Cindy Crawford, Stephen Baldwin, Darius Rucker (Hootie & the Blowfish), Janet Jackson, Mike Tyson, Matthew Fox, Martina McBride, Halle Berry, Lee Ann Womack, Tim Hardaway, Adam Sandler, Curt Schilling, Troy Aikman, Sinead O'Conner, Kiefer Sutherland and Crazy Legs the Puerto Rican breakdancer.

Walt Disney died. (but Mickey lives!!) George Harrison and Patty Boyd tied the knot. Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali and a Muslim. That evil Daylight Saving Time was instituted. That evil church of Satan was formed. The St. Louis Arch was opened. The National Organization for Women was founded. Ronald Reagan became CA governor. John Lennon says he's more famous than Jesus, then says he's not. The US Dept. of Transportation started up. The Grinch stole Christmas. Kwanzaa kicked off. The FDA said yes to the "Pill". (Not to be confused with the little blue one men take these days. The two do completely different things.) The Pope released Catholics to eat meat... except on Fridays. (I heard that somewhere.)

The US was $328.5 billion in the hole. A nickle would send a letter to any of the 196,560,338 documented peeps in the US. Out of every hundred workers, four and a half were jobless. $23,300 would get you a new house. A gallon of milk (.99) cost more than a gallon of gas (.32). If you had sixty cents you could own a dozen eggs.

In: mini skirts, bell bottoms, haircuts that didn't look like haircuts (men only), black power, Captain Kangaroo, flower children, the Temptations, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cher (timeless!), astrology, the Vietnam War, anything Batman, LSD (same as anything Batman), the draft, The Beverly Hillbillies, Ouiji boards, hippies, party lines, the space race, Red Skelton, Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, the Smothers Brothers, Yogi Bear and Martin Luther King. Oh yeah, and Jerry Lewis started his Labor Day telethons.

Not yet: Cable TV, cell phones (or cordless for that matter), microwaves, The Internet, computers to get to the Internet, hybrid cars, rap music, cruise control, American Idol, MRIs, face transplants, CDs, FedEx, global warming, about 80 million new people, VHS or DVDs or HD or Tivo or DVR or home satellite dishes, body wash, digital clocks, Hannah Montana, smart cars, those tube things that suck the money holder things at the drive-thru at the bank, GPS, the "Moral Majority", text messaging, Fonzie, JJ Walker, George Foreman grills, karaoke, plastic shopping bags, Google, a black president...