Bestler: My last car purchase certainly wasn’t a hearse

I bought a new car last year and while we were haggling, the salesman asked how long I expected to keep the car.

“Oh, I expect I'll be keeping it until I die,” I said matter-of-factly.

He was clearly taken aback. I don't think he had ever heard such a morbid answer.

But the truth is that I did not expect to purchase another car in this lifetime.

It’s not that I was approaching my deathbed, just that I didn’t plan to spend thousands more on a car. There are too many places to go, too many sights to see.

At 76, I’m still so bold as to buy green bananas. And the other day, as I stood in my closet, it seemed I also had enough clothes to last the rest of my life, especially living in McClellanville, where men's fashion consists of jeans and a T-shirt.

But now I’m beginning to wonder if I won't outlast all I own — the cars, the clothes, even our puppy Wasabi.

It was just one year ago — Super Bowl Sunday, to be precise — that I was carried to the hospital with a staph infection that could have been fatal. Indeed, I learned later that former golfer Ken Venturi suffered the same ailment — a staph infection in his spinal column — and died 11 days after entering a California hospital.

Today, when anyone asks, I tell them the same thing: “I'm not 100 percent better. I'm 110 percent better.”

I feel healthier than ever, possibly because antibiotics were pumping into my body around the clock for almost three months. Possibly because most every vital organ was checked and rechecked and found to be just fine, thank you. So fine, in fact, that I fully intend to do the Myrtle Beach Half-Marathon next year.

Today, I look at Sen. Bernie Sanders and have to remind myself that I'm a full two years older than he is — though he looks and sounds, in my mind, at least 10 years older than me.

Bernie wants to be president and if he were elected, then re-elected, he would still be president at age 83.

I figure if Bernie could hang on until 83, in the high-pressure job of president, I might just be around until 103.

Then who knows? I may have to break out the car brochures again.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Bestler: My last car purchase certainly wasn’t a hearse."