Been Thinking About.... Methuselah

   I heard from a friend of mine just the other day. He lives up near Syracuse, New York and had been out shoveling snow. He and his wife were using both the snow blower and the shovel, and had to remove the fine white  stuff both before and after work. Sounds like fun doesn't it? Anyway, he was lamenting the fact that he had hurt his back in the process of all that shoveling. He was already dealing with a knee that was hammered and had just returned from having two teeth crowned. Ouch! That puts a dent in the ol' pocket book. To say nothing of the obvious pain that back or knee problems bring. I got to thinking then about some of the old guys in the bible. The early fellows, just after men started living on the earth, were pretty long lived. Adam lived 930 years, his son Seth lived 912; Kenan 910 years. Enoch only lived 365 years, but it says he walked with God then he was no more because God took him away. His son, Methuselah, was the oldest living man; he lived to be 969 years old. I started wondering, how the heck did they do it? I'm either on the last legs of middle age or the beginning of being elderly, depending on how you look at it.  My friend with the physical problems is only in his mid thirties. How could people have lived for so long? I know that things like processed food wasn't around- no white flour or sugar, so that probably helped. Perhaps tooth decay wasn't an issue. What did they brush their teeth with though? What.... did you go out and break off a reed and grab a mouthful of sand and grind away?  What about minty fresh breath, what did you do about that? Frankly, I don't want to get too graphic here, but if your mouth smells like last night's dinner, whatever that may have been, how are you ever going to entice your wife into populating the earth? That's another thing. Did everyone just stay young for so much longer? I mean did these old guy's wives look like complete foxes until they were 800 or so? Human nature being what it is, didn't they get tired of each other, or did they come up with something to keep things pretty interesting for 750 or more years? Was it like the famous blues singers song - The Thrill is Gone  or more like Randy Travis's - I'm Going to Love You Forever? I can't say. There weren't any supermarkets, so I guess you had to grow or raise or catch or kill everything you ate. I imagine that would keep a guy busy. Of course there probably was a shortage of carpenters or plumbers so you had to build your own house unless you were a cave dweller. Even then, an outhouse or some form of waste management would be necessary. You couldn't just relieve yourself in the back of the cave, that could present all kinds of problems. Everything you needed you would have to make yourself- beds, bedding, clothes, pots, pans, eating utensils. I imagine their days were pretty full- gathering firewood, growing crops, tending livestock, building, packing water.  I bet no one ever uttered the phrase- I'm bored. What happened if you fell down and broke your arm or had a fever or got food poisoning?  I don't know if any of those things were ever an issue. Maybe there was no need for doctors at the time because everyone was so healthy. You'd have to be healthy to live that long. You sure wouldn't want to be suffering with depression for a few hundred years, that would be tough. I don't know what went on then, but I'm sure the food was healthy. Everyone got plenty of exercise and no doubt people must have gotten along with each other pretty well. They had to, they needed each other. I'd love to sit back and have a birds eye view of what things were like back then. I kind of doubt if sleep disorders were a problem. I imagine at the end of a long day of doing what it took to survive, you'd probably sleep like a baby and perhaps dream of what the future holds.