Redefining Age

Day 40: If they say I'm too old for you,
Then I shall answer "Why, sir!
One never drinks the wine that's new...
The old ones taste much nicer!
-From the musical "The Boy Friend."

This evening after rehearsal, I was talking to my good friend Goldstein about the concept of age. He and I agreed that while we are (as they say) "eyballing forty," we really don't feel much older than we did in college. This is not the first time I have had this conversation, and it seems that most people within my demographic do not truly view themselves as "middle aged." When we were teenagers, forty seemed (to paraphrase Garrison Keillor) unspeakably ancient, old, degenerate...and now it seems about my age.

I distinctly remember when Dear Old Dad turned forty...I was about eight years old, and could not comprehend why he chose to spend a sparkling, cheerful, two-weeks-before-Christmas weekend just lying on the couch and looking morose. I seem to recall going into the den and poking him with a stick or doing something comparably horrible...to which his only response was something along the lines of "enjoy being young while you can." After a few days of delicious self-pity, he pulled himself out of the ashes and soldiered on, regaining a good 98% of his former cheerfulness, which was still quite ample. In a typical moment of wisdom and insight, he assured me that there would be no more gloomy birthdays for him. Each of us has that one natal anniversary circled in black, and once it has passed, no others can harm us. At the time I was mystified by the concept of depression following a birthday.

My personal bete noir was thirty-five. It knocked me down for the count, and I followed my paternal example and wallowed in my decrepitude for a few days, and then rejoined the world with joie de vivre relatively intact. As forty approaches, I scoff at it. I thumb my nose. I guffaw in the visage of my fortieth year. I might even work up a respectable chortle.

I will neither belabor the point nor dredge up an old discussion, but I must admit that I keep returning to the "Cougar Town" posting of a couple of weeks ago. Again, I am finding levels of inaccuracy heretofore undiscovered. If so many people in my age group are either miserable, desperate, sexually frustrated beyond redemption, or over-the-hill, I have mercifully been spared their company. May that blessing continue.

One final point to share here, and I must give credit where it is due...this is Goldsteinian philosophy. It is not entirely applicable to age, but it holds at least a tangential connection. I have dubbed it "Stein's Theory of Relativity" and I expect it to overtake Einstein's any day now...

When people say how much faster time passes with age, they are correct from a certain point of view. When one is ten years old, a year is one tenth of one's life. When one is forty, one year is one fortieth of the life lived so far. Time DOES move faster when measured against one's entire life to date. It's all perspective.

In today's News From The Motherland...tougher gun laws?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8292525.stm

Cheers!
FLT3