My Life in Sports

So there I sat, bare as a baby in a diaper under my swaddling cloths, nearly three-quarters of a century of experiences embodied in the sack of wrinkled gooseflesh uncomfortably enclosed... reviewing the table of contents for my "Apologia Pro Vita Sua." My "Scenes from the Seven Ages of Man"... or rather, of "A man"....

Only why seven? Far be it from me to question Shakespeare or his source, apparently Ecclesiastes. But that seems an odd divisor, doesn't it? In more than the numerical sense? You could just as easily use three, say, like the periods in ice hockey and lacrosse. Childhood, vigorous adulthood, senility. Or five, like the sets in men's tennis. Or nine, for that matter, like the innings in baseball... even fifteen, the rounds in a championship boxing match, if you're into really fine-grained detail. Granted, the World Series can go to seven games. But four strikes me as the most à propos segmentation-like the quarters in football and basketball. Childhood, young adulthood, middle age, old age. "My Life in Four Quarters." Obvious sports metaphor. I like that title....