Good Ones Die Young

Nicer than what we partied in as teenagers

Along time ago when I was a teenager I went to an upstairs apartment to attend one of those ridiculous parties along with my eventual wife. At any kids’ parties, the usual rhetorical anarchy or nihilism went on as usual.      At some point a few at the kitchen table were joined by an eighty year old woman who had climbed the stairs herself without holding the rail because she carried both of her dangerous items - tobacco and bottle of scotch.       I watched her hand-roll her own cigarettes and pour her own shots. I asked her something that kids are stupid enough (I still am) to ask her, “How on earth are you living so long while you’re living the way you do?”       She was a very intelligent chivalrous comic and after a few delaying seconds later she replied, “Only the good ones die young.”       I wondered about that for only a few seconds and then told my girlfriend, “I guess we’ll be O.K.”