Coprolite Newsletter, October 2003

At long last, scientists have come up with some information about aging that may actually be helpful.

Usually, their pronouncements don’t suggest anything you could actually DO about getting old except to sit there and brood. They’ll say something like, "Cells are programmed to die after they divide so many times." What good does it do to know THAT?

But some folks at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego have explained things in a way I can sort of understand. They say that after middle age, it’s not that our cells stop dividing but that they replace themselves with imperfect copies. The result is sagging skin, graying hair, and aching backs. Aging, say these researchers, "is really a disease of quality control."

Now, anybody who has ever worked for a living has probably had to deal with quality control issues. It’s something we ought to be able to handle. The trouble is, different kinds of businesses take very different approaches to quality control. Which are the best ones to use? I think I’ll try them all.

I have a son who’s in charge of quality control for a software company. What little I understand of his job is that he is supposed to keep the product from going out the door before it’s ready. This sure seems like a principle I could use.

I belong to all these committees and volunteer organizations that insist on having meetings at 7:30 in the morning. Now I can tell them that my quality control team won’t allow me to go out until my body is ready, which will be about 10:00. This should lead to stress-free, well-rested, happy little cells that can pay more attention to what they’re doing. How can the poor things be expected to divide properly with all the distractions of fighting rush hour traffic and then listening to cheerful speakers at an unnatural hour?

I used to have a neighbor who worked in quality control for a manufacturing plant. His job apparently involved using a micrometer to compare what was coming off the assembly line with perfect examples of what the part was supposed to look like. This approach might be useful too. I understand there are magazines and even movies that show fine examples of youthful skin cells. I’ll just explain to my wife that these are necessary for my quality control studies. I don’t believe it’s necessary that the samples I study be the same gender as me. Photos of female skin seem to be more readily available, and I’m sure will prove instructive and inspiring.

The corporation I used to work for took a third approach to quality control. The managers simply came up with a new slogan every year telling how much they loved their customers, how highly they valued their employees, and what a terrific job we all did. I guess when individuals do this it’s called making "positive affirmations." I think I’ll try this too. I just hope that when I tell myself in the mirror how young I look, I can manage to sound more sincere than the corporate bigwigs did.

Even if these methods fail, the idea of taking a businesslike approach to aging seems a positive thing. For example, I used to think I went bald some years back. Now I realize that, in order to compete successfully in today’s fast-paced global economy, I found it necessary to restructure my head and lay off a few thousand redundant follicles.

Who knew you could learn so much about living from the world of business?

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com
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