While doing my usual WWW surfing drifting from topic to topic and site to site I came across a Life Expectancy Calculator.  Well, OK, I have done one of these before and understand how it takes your age, weight, gender, and lots of other factors and estimates how old you can expect to live. 

Of course all these are just based on averages and limited factors, but my scores were not encouraging.

What a downer! The first asked all kinds of questions and said I'd live to 72 (I'm 41 years old now).  So, I Googled up some other calculators for a second, third and fourth opinion. 

One generously said I could make it to age 80–not really too encouraging but better than the rest.  

It went downhill from there.  The third calculator had like 34 questions and each answer showed how the info you input changed the outcome as you proceeded through the questions.  Man, those ages for death kept getting lower and lower. 

For a while it looked like I'd probably die before even finishing the questionnaire!!!  I ended up with 71 but it said my virtual age was like 54.

So, I did one more different age calculator.  The questions were similar, but the result was the worst of all.  Most of the other calculators also gave recommendations for improving your score like more excercise, better diet, and so forth. 

Well this last cheery little application predicted I'd only live to age 55!!! 

Further, it compared my expectancy to those in other countries according to the World Health Organization, and said,

"You are just barely above the lowest 10 nations of the world for life expectancy."

And then, to top it all off, the friendly advice at the end: "Better buy some life insurance – today!"

If anyone out there wants to pay to take out a policy with themselves as beneficiary that would be fine.