Sometimes I just feel like I’m getting old. Other times (like today) I feel more like I’ve become the Sayer of the Law.
Not so much “Get off my lawn” as “Not to run on all fours—are we not Men?”
Sometimes I just feel like I’m getting old. Other times (like today) I feel more like I’ve become the Sayer of the Law.
Not so much “Get off my lawn” as “Not to run on all fours—are we not Men?”
LOL
Hang in there, buddy. We need you – the wit, the info, the perspective , the thought provoking essays. Think young, be young.
I’m headed towards f-f-f-f-f-f-fifty- fifty- fifty four-four-ish…. you know….54? People tell me I look fourty four. (I think its the full head of brown hair and not being fat. Mick Jagger-like.) After I give them a benjie for their honesty (snicker) I just keep tellin’ myself that. 44. 44. 44……..
You’re a guy who still uses the word, “Honor,” and knows what it means. If that’s old then to hell with youth.
I’d thank you to watch your tongue, Drew. You’re coming up on my age.
Repeat after me, “I am young and vibrant.”
It’s not just old. It’s the feeling that the world is now full of half-animals.
I have a full, though thinner than it used to be, head of hair. Once it was a dark chestnut brown. First the red, then the black, then the brown hair turned grey until now my hair is sort of greyish-blond. I’m muscular without a belly. I have a youthful gait when I’ve a mind to and ignore the pain that’s my constant companion.
You sound heartbroken.
Repeat after me, “I am young and vibrant.â€
“I am young and vibrant.â€
“I am young and vibrant.â€
“I am young and vibrant.â€
Dave will be fine. Swiss, you know.
Some time I need to write a post on the influence of the maternal line on identity. Although I’m Swiss, German, and French as well, more than a century of Irish maternal identity and/or ancestry has provided me a largely Irish identity. Despite being 170 years (at least) from Ireland my mom, my maternal grandparents, and all of their parents affected a slight brogue. I can speak with a brogue when I’m inclined to.
@ Dave,
How much effect does ancestry have on identity for you? I didn’t really know my parents, so I kind of had to make my own up as I went, and even now I find it still open for revision. Is it very different for you as someone with a strong family background?
Stop complaining, Dave. I’m a freshman Medicare recipient. Other than a sometimes bothersome lower back (and an ever-growing bald spot), I’m in good shape. As long as my gray matter continues to function properly, I’m not going to complain (much).
I’m really happy that I’m no longer on Wall Street. It would be an impossible job. How to you give advice in such an uncertain world — when you know it and so do your clients? Worse yet, with cell phones, I’d be on call 24/7.
My biggest accomplishment is to have been married ti the same wonderful woman for 43 years.
Ben:
Is it very different for you as someone with a strong family background?
I’m fascinated by this as well. Dave and I have similarly odd life experiences, but he comes from deep roots and I from no roots at all. (Like you, it seems.) It seems almost alien to me, and interesting.
Punks. Wait’ll you hit 70 and your attitude toward your body is akin to that you’d have toward an old car. An old car whose every new noise is an occasion for, “Uh oh, what does this mean?” An old body whose every new pain is an occasion for a similar reaction. And then there are the memory lapses which, if you let them, can really scare the shit out of you…
Still, but for being overweight –four-five days a week in the gym doesn’t seem to help that — I look like I’m 55 and don’t have a gray hair in my head. But I do feel the years. I read the other day that inside every old person there’s a young person saying, “How the hell did this happen?” His voice is growing fainter.
Can you spring me from the moderation thingy, Dave?
Punks. Wait’ll you hit 70 and your attitude toward your body is akin to that you’d have toward an old car. An old car whose every new noise is an occasion for, “Uh oh, what does this mean?†An old body whose every new pain is an occasion for a similar reaction. And then there are the memory lapses which, if you let them, can really scare the devil out of you…
Still, but for being overweight –four-five days a week in the gym doesn’t seem to help that — I look like I’m 55 and don’t have a gray hair in my head. But I do feel the years. I read the other day that inside every old person there’s a young person saying, “How the hell did this happen?†His voice is growing fainter.
sorry for the double posts. It’s an age thing….
Hey, at 57 I don’t look a day over recently deceased.
I’m looking forward to swimming in the pool at the senior citizen’s center come February. No joke.
I’ve felt like this since my twenties, and it’s gotten worse.
Ben,
I don’t want to pry. But, am wondering were you adopted, or did you just have a disengaged relationship with your family, through whatever means that would be?
How much of the perceived failure of morality is the result of increasingly less censorious media standards?
Forty years ago, a story of rampant boy buggery might have so shocked and offended the editors of newspapers that they wouldn’t publish it to protect their readership. Or phrase it so delicately that that readers wouldn’t perceive the gravity of the story.
How many times have you read the word “sodomy” on the front page?
So, not only greater access to information through the Internet, and a profusion of babblers who work over every angle, but relaxed standards of censorship bring stories into the sunshine.
WWBSD? What would Blackie Sherrod do? (Legendary sports writer in Dallas.)
jan,
I was bounced back and forth between grandparents who sort of cared about me and parents who didn’t at all, and were either high or beating “Jesus” into me with a club and a leather strap. I left home when I was sixteen and never saw any of them again.
Identity is something I really struggled with, as I had no one to help me develop it. I don’t know what Michael’s experience was like, but it took me a long time to get to a place where I’m relatively comfortable with who I am. On occasion I do still wonder if there even is a “real” me, or just an artifical construct designed by necessity.
I’m in a pretty good place now though. I like my life and know my best days ar ahead.
Wow, Ben….
To me, relative to your posts anyway, you appear very confident in your ideas, which I kind of think relates to one’s identity and comfort zone within themselves. Consequently, while we obviously don’t agree alot with each other, I have come to read and respect your posts because they convey reasonable deductions, and above all a real sense of sincerity about what you say.
As for your parents, they may represent examples of how not to act. As children we seem to be given either great role models or ones that are severly lacking, with regards to our parents. However, sometimes experiencing the dark side of childhood actually gives one more of a contrast of what they want to carve out for themselves in their adulthood.
My own childhood was sort of that way, in that I grew like a weed with very little adult pruning or guidance augmentation. I think that’s why I’m so independent and ‘stubborn’ (at least that’s how my husband sees me), because I individuated early, discovered pathways through life by trial and error, and got to know and lean on myself in the process.
Anyway, I appreciate your candor, as I do the conversations you share here and at OTB.
Ben:
In my case it was just sort of an endlessly fractured reality. My mother had me when she was 16 — I never met my biological father — later adopted by my dad (my mother’s second of four husbands) who was a soldier. Moved a lot — new kid in school every year but one. My mother went through IIRC 5 different religions ranging from Jew to Lutheran. I was molested at 11 by a family “friend” who somehow nevertheless remained a family friend. Quit school at 16. Kept moving. I’ve lived in IIRC more than 50 abodes. Have spoken to my mother twice in 34 years.
Now I have a very successful marriage of 33 years, two obnoxious kids, great career. But like you, I had to figure out the narrative, make sense of it, bring the threads together into a coherent whole.
Which, not coincidentally I would guess, is what I do for a living. I’m no prose stylist but I am damned good at running multiple, disparate plot lines, having no idea how they’ll fit together, feeling my way forward and still getting them all to mesh as though it was all planned.
Hah. I had not realized the connection until just now, writing it. Which would be typical. Interesting. My work is solving the narrative problems of my life. Great: I’m trapped in an overly obvious metaphor.
I forgot to comment on that….
I look at children as tender human sprouts, spending most of their energy growing up and learning what it takes to be on their own. Our childhood behavior usually just mimics what authority figures tell us, as to how to act, look like, and what to believe. It isn’t until we can extricate ourselves from our caretakers, processing on our own who we are, do we become authentically ourselves.
In other words, the ‘real you’ is who you are today. Congratulations in discovering that, as some people never do.
@jan
Thank you for the kind words.
@Michael
I have a conceit that troubled childhoods make for interesting adults. There’s also somethng liberating about starting from the pits, because you can only go up.
I’ve always found your story (what I knew of it) to be inspiring; from vagrant to successful author, husband and parent. After a toasted marriage and almost twenty years of fucking up every good thing I’d accomplished, I think I’m finally on the right track.
It actually helped when I ran into one of my old undergrad professors a few years ago. He told me what an incredible disappointment I was to him, because I was bright and talented and wasting it. It finally clicked that my parents were wrong and I actually could amount to something after all.
Ben,
My words for you are less kind than simply observant. When people get off the topic of politics, more of where they are personally coming from tends to seep through, without being warped through some kind of seeded ideology.
I think your comment about “troubled childhoods make for interesting adults” holds some truth in it. Whatever comes easy is oftentimes given less thought. But, when you have to do battle, to either arrive at an understanding or a goal, then there is a greater appreciation as well as a steeper learning curve. You know that old adage of , “What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.”
Anyway, your posts have been thought-provoking for me…..
Michael,
Most people lives are like that, except that most either don’t know it, or they don’t admit it.
Ah, good. Yes, I do know that “censorious” does not convey my meaning in the comment above. “Censorial” does.
I wasn’t going to step on Ben’s post with something that trivial. Remarkable men.