The workings
Behind today’s Divertimento lies the tricky question of the passage of time, of how we age. The American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald explored in a story what a human life could be like where time rejuvenates rather than ages. Based on this story, David Fincher directed the 2008 film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. This same idea of the reverse passage of time was condensed by the comedian Sean Morey: “The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is hard, it takes up a lot of your time, and what do you get at the end? Death! What a gratification! I think the cycle of life should go backwards. One should die first, and leave that matter behind. You start living in a nursing home, where you feel better every day. You end up getting a gold watch and then you start working. You work for forty years until you are young enough to enjoy your retirement! Then you go to university, drugs, alcohol, parties and sex! Then high school, school and childhood, where you don’t stop playing without responsibilities and worries. And so you become a baby and return to the womb where you spend your last nine months floating– and then it all ends with an orgasm!”. This insightful witticism is attributed on the web to more than a few authors –Woody Allen and Quino, among others–, although it seems that it was Sean Morey who first proposed it back in the 1970s (or at least that’s what his website says).
The fun
There are people who don’t like to tell their age. One of them just says that if birthdays were only celebrated, as they should be, when the day of the year and the day of the week on which one was born coincide, this summer 2016 would have been his 9th birthday. How old is that person?
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Solutions
We encourage the readers to try to solve the divertimento for themselves. Whether you succeed or not, you can always consult the solution in this link.
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