It’s been a couple weeks now, I was reading the daily headlines and took note of one, “Ginny Mancini Dies.” Of all the thoughts I could have had, the one I had was, ”Wow, she must have been 100!” and not hyperbolically. I knew Henry Mancini would have been almost 100 because my father would be almost 100 and they went to school together. As I read the obituary, I discovered she was close, but not quite. The former Ginny O’Connor was 97 years, 3 months old at the time of her death.

Today’s post is not about Ginny Mancini, nor is it about Henry, not even my father. It’s about 97 year olds and other peri-centenarians.

Undoubtedly you remember some of my best posts have to do with obituaries. Well, not completely true, but I find them fascinating even if I wrote about them only twice, and one of those two times rather obliquely. It really doesn’t matter who is the subject of the obituary, (not to me, but I won’t speak for the family), it matters what is said in those first few phrases. Naturally you can’t get to the meat of the matter without getting past the name and age. We already talked about those names (What’s in a (Nick)Name), so now let’s look at those ages. For the last few weeks, I’ve been doing just that, looking at the ages of those memorialized in the daily obituary column. I’ve discovered a really popular age for people to move on to Phase II, at least for the last couple weeks, is 97.

On one single day I noted seven of the 15 death notices were for 97 year olds. One of the others was 95 and another 93. The following day featured obits at four more folks aged 97 and one 98. Over the course of that week, I counted fourteen 97 year olds, three at 96, five 95, two who were 91, and the lone 98 year old. (Yes, I did.) (Really.) (So don’t believe me, I know I did!!) That’s a bunch of almost centenarians. During that whole week I also noticed one news article noting the upcoming 104th birthday of a local citizen and of one other joining the ranks of the century-folks. These weren’t just your run of the mill, “John Doe Turns 100” fluff pieces. They were in-depth discussions on the secret to long living, happy lives, and what’s the most surprising thing you’ve seen in your century of roaming the earth. That’s important to me and it’s equally important to me that I get to 100. I find myself fascinating and deserve to be interviewed too.

The surest ways I’ve found for a non-athlete, non-politician, non-celebrity type person to be queried on the state of the world are to win a Nobel Prize or turn 100. In my case, turn 100. But in that one week I spotted only two hitting the hundred (or better) mark while twenty people had their famous 15 minutes distilled to three minutes or less reading time for just getting oh so close.

You know, even considering how old I feel on a lot of days, especially after rising but before coffee, getting to even “just” 97 seems like such a long way away. I wonder what Nobel categories I could sneak my way into.