“Mr. Collins!  Mr. Collins, what was it like being 60?”

“What?  Who are you people?”

“Piers Morgan, CNN, Mr. Collins.  Pray tell, what was it like being 60?”

“Piers?  As in Fillmore Pierce Buchanan?  What time is it, anyway?”

“It is just past midnight on the day you were born, sixty-one years ago.  You must be seeing flashes of your life pass your eyes right now, tell us about them please.”

“Piers Morgan…  I don’t think I ever watched you.  Where’s Keith Olbermann?”

“Would you rate your life, so far, as more successful or less successful than the rollout of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act?”

“Um.  I think my art career, slow going as it has been, probably started out better than the Affordable Care Act.  But my whole life?  Who wrote these questions?”

“Let’s talk about the 1960’s.  You grew up in the 60’s, the days of free love, mind-altering drugs and anti-establishment protests.  You were there, at Woodstock, when Jimi Hendrix played the National Anthem on his electric guitar.  How high were you that morning, and do you remember any of it?”

“What year was that, 1969?  I think I was playing softball.  I remember we had an old Woodstock typewriter at home, but maybe my folks had already junked it by then.  1969.  Abbey Road.   Give Peace a Chance.   And I was between girlfriends.  I got kicked off the high-school newspaper staff because the teacher-advisor caught and confiscated my pass-around underground magazine.  That was an interesting year.”

“Tell me more about your ordeals in that formative year, Mr. Collins.  For instance, did you have friends who were killed in the Vietnam war or in demonstrations against it?”

“Piers, I didn’t know anyone who went to Vietnam.  People all around me went to Vietnam and didn’t come back, but I didn’t know them. There were few volunteers.  It was the time of college deferments and conscientious objectors.  And that gave way to draft lotteries.  Based on my birth date, my lottery number was in the mid 200’s.  So I didn’t have to go.  No army for me.  I never would have survived.”

“Mr. Collins, how can you live with yourself, knowing how so many of your cohort died in Vietnam, never to see their own sixty-first birthdays?  Not to mention the ones who did return, scarred by that war, what would you say to them now?  Would you tell them your lottery number?  Would that make everything all right?”

“No.  No.  The cruelty of this unfair life is that those who aren’t subject to misery are left to feel guilt for not having suffered.  If only happiness were the norm.  If only the outcome of the roll of the dice was less stark.  If only we even had a chance to roll the dice.”

“Mr. Collins, thank you.  Happy Birthday to you.  This is Piers Morgan, CNN.”