Normal. Normal. Normal.
Which was strange. Not because I expected bad news. I just didn’t expect… this.
I spent 25 years smoking. Twenty drinking. I skipped doctors for longer than I should have.
Somewhere along the way I decided those things would always be part of my introduction.
The smoker. The drinker. The guy who hadn’t had a checkup in years.
Wednesday I got naked for a dermatologist. Fiona examined my entire undercarriage while I lay there like a dying cockroach with my legs spread apart. Today, I never untied my shoes.
Bernice came out and called my name. We stopped by the scale. 161. She showed me to Exam Room 8, confirmed the usual information, checked my blood pressure and vitals, and mentioned the office had recently been remodeled.
I said “Oh, really?”
“It used to be kind of dated. And it was a little… sad.”
“Oh wow, then it’s like showing up to a new place to work,” I said.
She laughed. “It really is.”
She finished up getting things ready and then left the room. A few minutes later Stephen walked in. We introduced ourselves and he sat down. He’s about six years younger than me. Old enough that he’ll probably grow old with me instead of before me.
Stephen checked my ears, eyes, mouth, and throat. Listened to my heart and lungs. Just some deep breathing in and out. I kept waiting for the exam to start.
Instead, he sat back down and we just talked.
I told him I had a plan for the next twenty years.
Hawaii. Sydney. Maine. And the Moon.
“You’d actually go to the Moon?”
I said yes. “I’m not sure I’d stop, get out and walk around, buy a postcard, or if I’d just slingshot around it, take a couple of snaps out the window, and come back home.”
“So a moon flyover.”
“Maybe I’ll save the Moon for later and just take a flight on Bezos Air first. Something closer to home.”
“Give it fifteen years,” I said. “It’ll probably cost what a Disney vacation costs now.”
He laughed.
“You’ve thought about this.”
“I have a plan. Then I can reevaluate every five, ten years, if needed. Adjust accordingly.”
“That’s a good system.”
“I have a systems brain. This is what it does instead of anything useful.”
Stephen didn’t seem concerned about it. He calls it our “second half.” I’m not mad about it. More days behind than ahead. Son, daughter, wife. Wants to go skydiving. Waiting until the kids are older. Doesn’t think his wife’s coming.
“I want to do that too,” I said. “I’m terrified of heights.”
“Same.”
“So we’re doing it scared.”
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“That’s usually how it works.”
I told him the owner of the company where I work has three sons, and they all went skydiving together. I saw the pictures at work. All three of them suiting up, then mid-air, grinning like idiots, looking like they’d just discovered the best thing that had ever happened to them. And finally back on Earth. With gravity. And cake.
“That sounds like fun,” he said.
“I know right?!”
Twenty minutes later. Two guys who’d both apparently decided at some point that heights were no longer allowed to be a reason not to do something.
Then I told him almost everyone in my family had died between 58 and 62.
He nodded.
“I don’t see that for you.”
I know. Friends have said the same. For some reason it took someone with his name embroidered on his coat before it actually got through.
I said “I realize I may not have lived as badly as they did but I still have the shitty genes.”
Then he looked at me.
“You don’t get all of your parents’ genes. Only part of them, not necessarily the full sequence.”
“You look healthy.”
I drove home thinking more about Hawaii than my birthday in a few weeks.
The lab results started showing up that afternoon. I spent the next few hours relearning what LDL, PSA, and A1C actually meant.
Mostly normal. A couple of numbers nudged outside the lines. Nothing dramatic. The same two that started nudging about ten years ago. The ones pretty much everyone gets eventually because… food.
Improperly.
Then came the official summary the next morning via the portal.
Four words.
My copay was $40. Ten dollars a word. No punctuation. Substack, take notes.
That’s when it hit me.
Those lab results weren’t measuring the guy I spent years introducing myself as. The former smoker. The past drinker. The guy who skipped doctor’s appointments.
They were measuring the one who showed up that morning. The one who goes to the gym, lost over 20 pounds, and the one who now looks for protein in the air. The one already planning a trip to Hawaii in a couple of years.
How many of us are still living by lab results from years ago?
The shy kid.
The divorced guy.
The employee who got fired.
The person who never thought they were creative.
We keep judging ourselves by old test results.
Even after we’ve changed.
Originally published at https://cinnamonunplugged.substack.com on August 2, 2026.
