Since the beginning of this year, one thought keeps pestering me over and over again: my No. 1 son will turn fifty in a few months, and my daughter will turn thirty half a year later. Well, my No. 2 son will turn thirty-three between his siblings’ birthdays. My children’s age says a lot about my own, it goes without saying. Gosh, I will turn seventy-nine in a few short months! I am aware that all these numbers are for the birds, but they still cross my mind every now and then. Fifty, thirty, thirty-three, seventy-nine… What can I do in my predicament? As ever, the best thing I can do is to write a short piece about my recurrent thoughts and hope that they will stop pestering me soon afterwards. More often than not, this is what actually happens. As far as simple tricks go, this one beats them all. The secret of writing, as it were. And it must be one of the most judiciously guarded ones, too. Greetings Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, Joseph Joubert, Jules Renard, Yuri Olesha, Daniil Kharms, Varlam Shalamov, Max Frisch, and John Cage!