Coming To Terms With Approaching Middle Age

Hi, remember me?  Yeah, it’s been awhile…  OK, so, it’s been a LONG while.  I took all of February off because I am a slacker.  And by slacker, I mean… I’ve actually been working.   Nothing fun mind you.  WORK work.  You know, that stuff you should be doing every day instead of reading this crap.

So, I think I’ve answered my WUMF question.  It’s dead.  It has ceased to be.  It became a hassle to try and cram small nuggets of content into a post at the end of the month just to hit a date.  I know.  First world blogger problems.

But, now we are into March and, of course, it’s time to remind myself of how much closer to death I really am. 

I AM 39!?!?!?!?

Yep…   

As a little experiment I went back and read my past posts on birthdays.  I was a morose sonofabitch, wasn’t I?  I just read the whole post about turning 33 and Madonna and American Pie and WOW! 

OK…  Enough of that.

Here’s what the last six years have taught me.

First of all, 39 is weird.  I mean really weird.  Much more so than 29.  Except for nine and 19, all the nine years are going to be weird but 29 wasn’t that big of a deal.  I had just bought a house and was about to get married…Excuse me while I laugh about that in my head for a bit.    But really, 29 wasn’t horrible.  I wasn’t that cranky yet.  Somewhere into my 30s, I became a cranky old man.  But, now, I feel like I am 29 again. I don’t know why?  Could it be, that I have dropped down to the weight I was at 29?  Could it be that other situations resemble what my life was like when I was 29?  Maybe.  The point is, that I don’t feel bad about being 39, but it’s just so odd to see, “I am almost 40.”

What the hell?  If you are over 40, think about what 39 felt like.  I sure as hell do not have anything together in terms of my shit.  I know I have not grown up.   But I don’t feel like an immature asshole.  I am a perfectly aged one, if anything.    I don’t know if this is what could be considered a mid life crisis.  If it is, 79 is going to REALLY SUCK.

I guess that I’ve sort of reclaimed a bit of myself and don’t get as angry.  I couldn’t care less about the youth of America because, well, they’ll be in my shoes soon enough and then they will see what I’ve seen.  They will also have to deal with how my child acts because karma is a fickle bitch.  When the 20 year olds of today reach 39, my kid will already have been in their shoes and hopefully she will crush that bitch of a stigma.  If not, dumb youth is basically universal.

Another thing about 39 is that I feel like I’m healthier than I was through most of my 30s.   I wasn’t sickly, but my overall well being was poor.  My outlook was poor.  My intake was poor.   So, there is time to fix all of the internal struggles we have with getting older.  Unfortunately, we will still be hampered by some of the physical ones.    I wouldn’t tell you to be proactive and guard yourself against letting your body deteriorate, but I would say that treating your body like a rental car perched at the top of San Francisco’s Lombard St., revving the engine, knowing full well you took the insurance, is probably a bad idea.

Moderation is more than just a cliché, but it also matters what quality your vices are.  I drank a hell of a lot between 21-23 and I felt like crap, afterwards.  Now, I drink maybe once a week, and even though I have tied a few on in the last year, I have recovered quicker and with less effects during the drinking.   However, my body, in its reclaimed state can handle the alcohol a lot better.  My tolerance has gone up even though my weight has gone down.  I’ve also switched to a better grade of alcohol.  Consider how your body feels when it eats McDonald’s vs. a nice home cooked meal.  It’s still the same type of food, but better quality.  Staying away from crap like “Lite” beers and drinking more wine have had an overall positive effect.  Quality and quantity working together it seems.

SO, when it comes time to roll the odometer into my 40s, I’m probably going to get a rude awakening.  Who knows?  Maybe it’s like dusting off a classic car, one with low mileage, and taking it across country.  Shit starts falling apart rather quickly.   However, I have no desire to be afraid of life.  I am taking it as it comes.  Doing the best thing I can to stay here as long as possible, with flare and responsibility.    This body needs to be in motion and we should exercise it and keep it limber.  Get your ass off the couch and move, people.  If you do that, you can do all the other things you’ve missed out on in the last ten years.

What are you waiting for, 49?

Screams From An Italian Restaurant

I will start off by saying that ten years ago, I would be guilty of this. Although, I don’t know why. I question it because almost 15 years ago, at the age of 20, I would have been content to mosey into my favorite dark and smoky bar, Hemingway’s, nestled below the dorms of The University of Pittsburgh and just slink into a set of tables, near the back and just hang out. No loud whooping it up. No lined up shots along the bar ready to toss back. Simply a few us, just sitting there, enjoying our drinks and loving life as an unemployed actor, contemplating life after college.

Shhh. Don’t tell anyone I was drinking underage in a bar. Well, it’s not like any famous NFL quarterback, with questionable morals was there buying me drinks… at least because I’m a guy. (I had a whole tangent written involving the joke about keeping a guy’s “you know what” in his wife’s purse. I’ll just skip it.) My point is that, yeah, I went a little nuts when I turned 21 and spent my hard earned pay partying after a long day of working for an Amusement Park in Ohio, still, after that year I retreated back to my cloak of tortured, misunderstood, old, before his time, soul. That was until I graduated college and had to get a real job.

Then it was, “Hey a bunch of friends are going to the local sports bar for wings. Let’s be loud and tell jokes and make lots of noise.” The 21 year old me would have glaringly side-eyed the 25 year old me for being annoying. Still, it was a simple phase that I grew out of before I hit 30. I very rarely drink except for a holiday which may be at most a glass of wine with dinner. However, I like to go and enjoy a good dinner with company. Usually, on Saturday, we join my in-laws for dinner at an Italian restaurant, near our home. It’s a hard place to get into on a Saturday night. They aren’t very big and with a little one it’s easier to get a large booth and let her sit on a booster between my wife and I?

The biggest problem I have with the place is that they always seem to have the loudest and rowdiest bunch of people seated at a long set of tables right up against us. It never fails. It’s hard enough to be able to carry a conversation with my daughter jabbering away but when you have the 50-60 crowd of cackling women and screaming men who all seem to laugh in a simultaneous uproar it becomes nearly impossible.

Whenever we sit down and begin to see the staff pushing the tables together we know what is coming. A group of glammed up cougar wannabes, doused in Old Lady Spice, toting their cocktails from the bar over to the table. Then comes the man and their vodka tonics or whatever and they look like they should be in contracting. Well dressed and slicked up hair, perfect mustaches that would make a 70s porn star cry. They all sit down and begin talking loudly, laughing even louder, constantly making it difficult for us to get out or our server to get in to serve our dinners.

The ears bleed, the eyes water, and the left hand firmly restrains the right one which is wielding a steak knife aimed directly at the temple. Honestly, It is so hard to sit and carry on a civil conversation just below a mild roar and not be annoying? I could understand if we were in a rowdy bar or someplace like a T.G.I.Fridays. But this is a little Italian restaurant with excellent house dressing and low lighting. I’m just trying to enjoy my steak sandwich and I have to put up with the cackling. Even the 25 year old me would be sitting there with the 20 year old wondering, “WTF?” (mandatory use internet slang quota reached for this post.)

Ultimately, we just put up with it, keep our comments under our breath. We finish our meal and we go, awaiting the next week’s offering of the men and ladies of the Aqua Velva and Net set, respectively. It really is a good house dressing. I love the turkey club and the Fra Diavola. I just don’t like all the yelling. I’m grumpy and old now. I’m no longer a tortured soul. I have a family and a mortgage. I’m not an unemployed actor, but I play one on….ok that was too easy of a joke. I’m still misunderstood but that’s because I am the only guy in a household of females. There’s my wife, my daughter, three female cats and one male, but he doesn’t count because he’s fixed. (Here’s where the reprise of the “junk-in-the-wife’s-purse” joke would have come back.) Makes me want to scream sometimes. Perhaps I will over a nice seafood marinara and a piece of bread dipped in the house dressing. You really do have to try it.

Mongo is 33 and cranky. Grrr Arrgh!

All right, let's get this over with for another year. It's my birthday. I am 33 years old, today, March 6th. At what age do we stop caring about our birthday? At what age do we hope others will, too? I didn't used to be like this. I used to be an attention starved, ham it up, spotlight seeking, dork. Now, I would rather stay home, have a piece of cake and just hope that midnight comes quickly. I mean, shouldn't I be happy that I have survived another year? I shouldn't complain because there are people in this world who didn't make it to my age who would have been quick to trade me places if given the chance. I guess it all comes down to my getting crankier in my years. I used to keep a smooth outlook. I used to see the world through Zen colored glasses. Now, I just want to crawl into a cave and hide. My wife asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. I said nothing special. I didn't want a huge dinner with all of my family around. It's not that I don't like to visit with family; it's just that I'm lazy and usually the house is wrecked from Tornado Bailey. I don't mind doing a Birthday Dinner out at a restaurant, but I hate to put everyone out of their way driving to meet us. Usually, I like to just go to dinner with my wife at Dave & Busters and then go spend an hour in the arcade. What am I, 33 or 13? I'm a big kid, what can I say? Still, for the life of me I can't believe that I've gotten this cranky at such a young age. I was an actor in college, a regular life of the party on campus, and now I hate to answer the phone or the door for anyone. Somewhere it all went horribly wrong and I think I know where.

I was working at a hotel as a banquet captain around the turn of the century. It sounds like I'm ancient. OK, fine. It was back in 2000. A local high school was setting up for their prom and I had become annoyed with the teeny boppers running around. I was used to my routine working in the hotel. If I set up a room during the day, I would grab the radio from the office and tune it into 102.5FM, the local classic rock station. It would make the time go faster and I felt that I was more productive with the music in the background. It also drowned out the phone in the office which usually disrupted my work in favor of going to another part of the hotel to fix something. This particular day, I was already fed up with the youth of America being....well, youthful. Did my generation act like that when we were in high school? I know I found it a requirement to make an ass out of myself in public, but I hope I at least was being intelligent and not worried about petty issues. Regardless, Don McLean started playing on the radio. If I have to even tell you what song it was, you should stop reading now. Go away. I will seriously turn this place into the Wild Bunch.

Get out!

Mongo feel better, now.

Anyway, so, the classic anthem of my childhood begins playing on the radio and these girls start singing along word for word. I didn't think much of it until the end of the first stanza when they all got quiet. After the first chorus, they all start up again, singing away like they wrote the damn thing. Then again, after the next chorus, they all got quiet again, looking at each other like, "What the hell? This isn't how it goes." I stopped in my tracks looked at them all and said, "YOU DON'T KNOW THE NEXT VERSE, DO YOU?" They looked at me with a lost look in their eyes. I mumbled something along the lines of, "Damn kids!" and walked off, continuing my work.

You see, in 2000, Madonna released a version of "American Pie" on her Music album. Keeping up with ADD addled youth culture, the lyrics were truncated to accommodate a mere four and a half minute version whereas the original LP has it at eight and a half minutes. However, these kids accepted Madonna's version as the original and thought that the original version was a remake. This is what irks me about the youth of today. I admit I've done it, too. I mistook Manfred Mann's version of "Blinded By the Light" as an original until I heard Springsteen singing it. I was amazed. How did I get this far believing that? But still, both of these versions were released in the 70's. While, Mann's version is better known even though Springsteen is the bigger artist, Don McLean is considered iconic like.....well, like American Pie. Yet, kids with their texting and 'meh' and n00b' and iPods have no appreciation let alone awareness of anything pre Britney Spears...and I don't mean, Britney "Oops I forgot my panties, again" Spears, I mean Britney "I'm too young to act this slutty in a school girl outfit....but with panties" Spears. They seem to think that life didn't exist before the Xbox. Well, guess what, you whipper snappers? You're going to support me when I get old, so get a damn job.

This lack of awareness by a bunch of high schoolers isn't the only instance that makes me nuts. Just recently on television, during the much needed writer's strike, reality TV finally took over. We were bombarded by hordes of competing Dad's and liars strapped to polygraphs and of course, American Idol wannabe Dance Wars: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann. The show, which pitted two judges from Dancing With the Stars against each other in a game of "You Got Served," offered up six weeks of dreck with one stand out dumb ass, Taylor Swift. She appeared during Country Week where both teams offered up dance numbers to what else......remakes of classic songs. Team Bruno performed "Life is a Highway" and Team Carrie Ann performed "These Boots are Made For Walking." When asked what she thought of the performances, Taylor said she liked "Life is a Highway," because she loves Rascal Flatts. I wanted to throw the set through the wall. If anything, the performance was second rate. Why they (TV) consistently try turning rock songs into a Broadway show is beyond me? These guys butchered the spirit of the song. More importantly, it wasn't a Rascal Flatts song! Hello, Tom Cochrane......from Red Rider...1992...oh wait, you were listening to Barney at that age, never mind. Oddly enough, she toured with Rascal Flatts so, chalk it up to shameless plug, I guess.

My point is that you may want to claw your own eyes out because some twenty something thinks Christina Aguilera did a great cover of All Saints' "Lady Marmalade." I know. I know. When that happened I wanted to shoot myself because this girl had never even heard of Patti Labelle. You may even want to hunt down those two coeds who got banned from Southwest Airlines and tell them that it's not because they were, "too pretty" but because the FAA is afraid their already oxygen deprived brains wouldn't pressurize correctly and would cause them to deflate on a later flights. Face it girls, you aren't that pretty and while we can take steps to look better looking, you can't fix stupid. What you can't do is stop the aging process. So, perhaps I should take the hint and try to be more positive about my age. I should see it as a chance to impart the wisdom I have gained in this life onto my daughter and hope that she breaks the trend of these clueless kids. I'm still going to get cranky when I see some kid wearing sweatpants with the words pink written across the ass. If my daughter does that, I'll ground her for life. Still, as I make my way through another March 6th, I am glad that I am in fairly good health and that I have people who want to and are willing to recognize my birthday. As 12:01 appears on the clock, signifying March 7th's arrival, perhaps this good ole boy will drink some whiskey or rye, singing, "This won't be the day that I die."