January 27, 2002:
Have you reached the age that when you see young parents, you come to find, that they are not as young as you thought? Over dinner I couldn’t help but notice the exuberant sticky-faced toddler in the booth next to ours. As he turned completely around to communicate to us, albeit in his own one-year old language, I found I was more interested in the young couple with him. First I assumed they were a sitter and her, ahem, date. I mean she used the word “like” in every sentence while her friend tried to eat his sushi without removing his tongue ring. After a moment or two I just had to know for sure. Yep indeedy, they were the parents, and even more shocking, firmly rooted in their mid-thirties!
Okay, this is how I figure it has happened.
As I’ve aged, along with my readers, people are starting to look younger than they really are.
Have I gotten stuck in the nineties with my coif? The fact that I refuse to have the pink and white manicured nails, that every female SCV resident has, may be showing my age? Am I the only one bugged by a young teacher using the word “like”, out of and possibly in, their classrooms?
I’m more than a little bugged as you can see. It all would have been just fine and I could have possibly kept the Eve of Destruction from taking off and then one, no make that two, more things occurred to make me feel that I had fallen over the hill in my mid-age climb.
The first was to find out that the young man that had kept me motivated during spin class with his firm biceps and equally firm quadriceps (outlined ever so neatly in his trim spandex cycling pants) was going to be thirty-eight soon. Have I really matured so far that the twenty-something Coffee Boys at the Kiosk no longer holds their appeal over me? Or had this gym-ster just taken really good care of himself and fooled me?
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Then, fate of all fates, I misplaced my eyeglasses and had to make a hurried visit to my ophthalmologist. After a cursory examination he had a few questions. Had anything occurred during the last year with my health? I proudly beamed and told him that I had lost ten pounds. Then he returned with, “Was that intentional or were you ill?” I had to guffaw right there and then much to his surprise. If a woman ever looses ten pounds unintentionally she would be calling a cancer ward in a hurry. Nope, I told him, it took a year and wondered why he was asking.
“You’ve lost 50% of your vision since last year.” WHAT? Did I misunderstand him? Was this a sign of cancer or some other kind of slow, lingering, inoperable death? No, what he had to say, which should have been a relief, was that it was due to old age. Old age!
So here I sit at this computer desk, still sweaty and stinky from Larry Verdugo’s spin class, thinking up wild, unprintable and profane verbiage! (None of which includes the word “like” but go straight for the jugular!) Work out as hard as I can! Have members, okay it was just one and he is a politician, comment on my abdominal muscles! Eat yogurt with soy protein three times a week! And what for? So that I can be a forty-something curmudgeon complaining about how youngsters have contributed too much slang into the English language, wear tongue rings and have babies! Jealousy is an evil thing!
So, now to answer that unasked question, I’m not throwing in the towel and quitting the gym any more than I’d quit ripping apart things that personally bug me. I just hope that a few readers admit that they might be feeling the same thing now and then and it’s okay. My tastes had to move up from checking out twenty-year-old men to thirty-year OLDER men. (I have to wonder if Eddie is having this problem too but that would make him have to admit that he checks out other ladies and, worse than that, NEVER reads my columns!)
The only thing I want help in is not getting caught with a nineties, or, gasp eighties, look. I can’t imagine a tongue ring, and my one stomach muscle cannot possibly support one there! And, at what age do you start looking ridiculous trying to keep up with the fashions anyway? Please don’t tell me that I am I too ridiculous allready.
