"Taking the Happy Bus On Home" goes reality

My short story "Taking the Happy Bus on Home" is starting to look more and more like a nonfiction piece.



When I wrote the story "Taking the Happy Bus on Home" for The Love Book, I was for the most part commenting on how people spend their lives (or rather not live them to the fullest). But I couldn't help setting the story in a slight-future where the average human life span has increased thanks to medical science. The conundrum as I saw it was not that medical science delays the aging process -- it doesn't no matter how many botox injections you pump into an actresses forehead or pacemakers you put in a stockbroker's heart -- but rather puts off death. The body continues to deteriorate and medical science keeps propping it up. I was being sarcastic with the idea of "supercentenarians" -- an entire retirement community that had to be bused, carted, and carried around. But this article in today's New York Times asks the same questions I did in "Taking the Happy Bus on Home."

What's really hilarious is that my sarcastic take on the issue could never match the absurdity of the Times piece