It’s been quite a few years since I owned a bathrobe. Exactly how many years, I can’t recall? Perhaps somewhere around 1980, just before I entered into my double-digit birthday phase of life? Double-digit birthdays, such a milestone. Quite a chasm between double-digit and triple-digit birthdays. That’s a milestone more than a few miles to far for the majority of us human folk.

A quick Google search indicates that there are roughly 92,000 centenarians in the United States, and 85 percent of them are women. It is predicted that by the year 2060, the number of folks in the United States celebrating triple-digit birthdays will be closer to 600,000.

Why such an increase? The majority of experts point to boring old medical advances, but comfortably residing far outside the realm of “experts”, I point to bacon, bathrobes, and backup cameras. Or, as those in my camp refer to it, “The 3-B Effect”. You are more than welcome to join my camp, there’s plenty of room, not an expert in sight, and fistfuls of bacon.

BYOB is the only rule. Actually, it’s not so much a rule as it is a kindly suggestion. You are more than welcome to use my bathrobe, but as I only have one, that will leave me bathrobeless. A precarious condition in which to make bacon. I suppose we could share? If such is the case, I request the right-side, I can’t properly feather my hair with my left hand. So it goes.

Yes, you read that right, after a hiatus of many, many decades, I am once again the proud owner of a bathrobe. I never thought I was the bathrobe type, but as I sit here writing my first bathrobe clad column, I realize that there was this whole other world that I have been missing out on. A world where Obi-Wan Kenobi of Star Wars and The Dude of The Big Lebowski are one.

A world forever bereft of scampering to appear in what society has deemed “dressed” when the doorbell unexpectedly dings and dongs. “My apologies, you caught me in the middle of my Judo training.”

Back to “The 3-B Effect” and its dramatic impact on the quantity, and perhaps quality, of centenarians. Bacon gives many people something to live for, an answer to “why should I get out of bed today?” As German philosopher, Fredrich Nietzsche, once said, “Those who have a why to live can bear most any how.” It is no coincidence that frying bacon sounds like a crowd whipped into a frenzy, wildly cheering you on to rise to the challenge, to face yet another day on the stretch of days towards triple-digit birthdays.

I’ve already expressed a few positive attributes of the bathrobe, but have you ever considered the number of people who totter over and meet their demise while attempting to get dressed? Trousers, socks, underwear, culottes…deathtraps.

This is where the bells and whistles of the modern automobile step in to round out the life-extending impact of the “The 3-B Effect”. Centenarians, in their shrunken state, are easy to miss with a cursory glance in the rearview mirror as one distractedly backs out of their parking spot at the BINGO Palace, contemplating which bathrobe they are going to purchase with their winnings. Velour…terry cloth…sateen…fleece…? BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

May the force be with you.