The View From 45

I’ll never forget (for as long as I’m young enough to remember) a conversation I had with some girlfriends over 10 years ago. Most of them were about five to seven years younger than I was. One was lamenting her upcoming 29th birthday. In all of my sage wisdom, I replied, “Try 34.” Oh to be a nubile 34 again.

Last summer, at an overpriced concert concession stand, a 50-ish guy at the register was giving me my change. He counted it out: “five, six, seven, eight . . . .” Then he goes, “Schlemiel, shlimazel, hasenpfeffer incorporated . . . .” I laughed as I had not heard that song since probably 1983. The guy nodded at me with a wink and said, “Yeah, you know that song, don’t you?” I smiled knowingly and sang back, “Give us any chance, we’ll take it. Give us any rule, we’ll break it . . . .” Then we shared a good laugh like old folks do when they get all nostalgic. As I walked away, I thought, What an Asshole.

One dark day not long ago, Margaritaville came on the radio and I mindlessly told my kids, “I had the 45 of this song.” Both, in unison, asked, “What’s a 45?” (Now it happens to be my age.) Soon after the Margaritaville incident, I watched my daughter open an envelope of disposable camera pictures. I told her to be careful with the negatives. I knew before the words had left my mouth that I would hear her ask, “What are negatives?” I then realized what my grandmother must have felt like when I asked her what a milkman was, or why she called the refrigerator an ice box. While I wasn’t looking, a whole shitload of time had been passing and leaving a dead vocabulary in its wake.

Why are we so afraid of aging? Because, as a friend once told me on my birthday, “I hope you enjoy it. You don’t have that many left.” Now I’m beginning to understand those “middle-age crazies” I heard about when I was a kid. I wouldn’t necessarily refer to this “midlife” feeling as a “crisis,” but it is a sort of second adolescence. Again, I feel uncomfortable in my body. Not so much awkward as unwieldy. When I was awkward, I knew I would eventually catch up with myself and get it. Now (in this body that is out of sync with its brain), when I try to turn flips on a trampoline or roller skate too fast, for example, my body tells me that I’ve lost it (and not just mentally). My chiropractor says, “Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should.” For those who are unfortunate enough to examine their advancing lives, there is a sort of cognitive dissonance that hits at around age 40. According to the results of my one-minute Internet search, the Swiss psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget (not sure if he's related to the watchmaker, but if he were, that would be somewhat ironic) coined the term cognitive disequilibrium to describe the experience of feeling a discrepancy between something new and something already believed or known. I think that applies to people in their 40s. We believe we can still hula hoop, for example, but our new (older) bodies rebel. I remember when my parents were my age. I thought they were so mature. Now that I'm there, unless I am an aberration (which is a distinct possibility) I realize that most 40-year-olds are just “extreme” teenagers. There’s nothing like having the ability to make a sophomoric sexual reference against a backdrop of a post-graduate education and a little extra life experience. There’s nothing more satisfying than being old enough to have the money to buy something completely impractical and frivolous. What sucks is wholeheartedly thinking you are still capable of that round-off/back handspring, and then your body betrays you when your bones don’t cooperate. What sucks is having an advanced case of hypochondria. Now the conditions I used to dream up could really happen. What sucks is treading that fine line between cougar and pedophile. Now that I’m old enough to use my age as birth control, I see that it’s a good thing I never became a high school teacher. Otherwise, I might have ended up in prison and pregnant. They (whoever “they” are—average pathetic people my age, I imagine) say 40 is the new 30. Does that make gray the new blonde?

At various points in our lives, we take steps from wondering to forgetting. In college, we wonder who we are. After college, marriage and children make us wonder where the hell we (and our keys) are. In our 40s, we’re afraid we have forgotten (or will soon forget) who we are (or were). What do we have to look forward to? Diets, arthritis, prescriptions, mammograms, colonoscopies, college expenses, grandchildren? Not to mention tending to aging parents (who will no doubt be difficult and noncompliant with their medications). At a certain age, do we realize that it’s too late to live the dream we gladly set aside 20 years earlier for kids and family? Sometimes I feel a mix of guilt and envy when I look at those I saw as selfish back then. The ones who went their own way and ignored the plan society expected of them. Are they happier? Probably not. I imagine they regret some things they didn’t do as much as others regret some things they did. This is not to say by any means that I think a person’s 40s are filled with misery and regret. I don’t know anyone who would trade their family for a chance at a do-over. Maybe the midlife crisis is a myth and most 40-year-olds never experience a fleeting, disconcerting, who-is-that-person-in-the-mirror? feeling. I submit that those who never wonder what happened to them while they were going about their lives are lucky, blissfully ignorant bastards.

They (whoever “they” are—people who have never had an STD, I guess) say it’s better to regret things you’ve done than things you didn’t do. I generally agree (except when it comes to things that could give you an STD) but when the opportunity to do what you didn’t do has passed you by, somehow, the fact that you can’t do it now hurts much worse than the fact that you could have chosen not to. I could do that round-off/back handspring. I just choose not to. Because my bladder might fall out.

If 50 is the new 40, does that mean another decade of looking at a stranger in the mirror? Or does some form of acceptance come in our 50s? Does something shift from “where are my dreams?” to “where are my glasses?” The disequilibrium of the 40s must subside after it scars our psyches and gives us early dementia. Do we really need those 10 years to prepare for the second half of an average lifespan? I think so. Otherwise we would see more 50- and 60-year-olds trying to hula hoop. And that is just dangerous.