Top of the board

When I worked in a ski school, back in the late sixties to mid-seventies, in the French Alps, the pecking order was defined by seniority. The more senior a ski instructor would be, the better and more business he or she would receive. As time would go on, and through attrition, one would crawl up the board – yeah, there was such a thing as a board in full view of everyone who happened to walk into the booking office! - and as your name would climb up, business would improve significantly.

I didn't stay long enough to live through the glory of being at the top or the infamy of retirement, but that day would happen when a ski instructor reached 61 (at my former ski-school anyway.) By then, your name would be erased from the board, you would become a non-entity and could only work when former students requested you specifically, or during peak season when overflow demand would allow it.

Today, I was wondering were I would stand in the “planetary board,” if there were such a tool, to rank the earth population. Out of 7 billion, what would my rank be? After a long afternoon or research, I computed that out of a planetary average life expectancy of 67.2 year, I would rank as the 462,327,112th oldest person living on the planet. That's still quite a sizable group and I won't worry too much about my ranks getting overly thin, at least for the next couple of weeks...