87 Some Things Just Don't Add Up

In 1951, I was born. By 1954, I was 1/13th as old as my father.

In 1964, I was 13 years old, 1/4 as old as him. Fractionally, I got a big jump on him. If you were to graph out my progress, you would see that ten years later, in 1974, I would be 1/3 as old as my father.

I = 1/Fa x N (= N/Fa): Every father and child lives and dies by this formula:

I is me; Fa is my father's age; and N is my age.

So I knew I'd be 1/2 as old as he was by 1994. And so on...

Waxing philosophical over the qualitative instead of the quantitative, in 1994 I'd be 1/2 what he was. But could I ever be even half the man my father was?

In 1999, he died, when I reached an age 3/5 of what he was.

Did this mean I only had 2/5ths left? With 3/5 down already, what would I do with the remaining 2/5? When I finally lay dying, would I pray for another 1/5? Another 1/50? Even another hundredth? Doesn't the quantitative pale in comparison to the qualitative?

That is, isn't it not how long, but how?

My father and I had ridden an asymptote. The math said that one day I should be as old as my father, dead or not. That is, for all practical purposes; within "laboratory error."

While I could never have been born in the same year as he was, I knew that one day the differences in our ages would be statistically insignificant--negligible. Consider being 999/1000 of something.

What about living longer than he did? I'd finally be older than he when he had died. I would cross that divisor threshold of life, from denominator to numerator. Quite the rite of passage!

In 1951, the year of my birth,I was nothing, so the math came out that I was 1/0'th as old as my father. Isn't this impossible, because you can't divide by zero? But like birth, death just doesn't add up, does it? It didn't when he died. Will it will I die?

To somebody? A lover, I hope, who flunked math.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Word count (excluding notes): 366

Submitted for Wednesday, March 27, 2024

2024: A Story-a-Day for the whole year. This one is #87.

All pictures are AI-generated, but the imaginary numbers are not!