It will take a lot longer if you wait until after you are dead

Our second night at S and T's was an in night, and they barbequeued and had several guests over. It was not a particularly late night and soon enough the four of us were installed in the den, each person with his or her chosen electronic device, surfing, blogging and what have you.
T mentioned she was a rollerskater, which got me thinking and talking about this movie I remembered from the early 80s era called Xanadu. I asked her if she had seen it and although she had not, she must have heard something about it and asked if it had been the "one with Fred Astaire". Although I said yes originally, it turns out we both made the same error and the actor/dancer in question was Gene Kelly, in his final feature role. It turned out that she was a bit of a tap dance aficionado and while she did not look up any Olivia Newton-John, she took charge of the demonstration and lead us encouragingly through several clips of the most impressive tap dancers leading eventually and inevitably to Michael Jackson (or MJ as she referred to him). At one point she said sighingly, "I would love to learn to tap dance. But it just takes so much time." To which I responded "it will take a lot longer if you wait until after you are dead." J started cackling hysterically and the sharpness of this retort was lost neither on him nor on my interlocutor. Only minutes before J had shared a couple of tokes with me in the back yard, and was as stoned as I was, which was pretty damnded stoned despite my strict adherence to the three-puff rule which had guided me well and only let me down when I strayed from it since I adopted it...back...well, I forget.
It will take a lot longer indeed. It was one of the simplest examples of my new evangelism and it made J laugh hysterically and repeatedly, with not one or two but several incredulous outbursts. It was a clever line and as delighted as I was to see that T got it, I was infinitely more delighted to see that J got it and got it so well.