Tag Archives: Middle-Aging

January 17, 2012 · 0:00

People My Age

Well, it’s my birthday.  And I have a problem.

You might have noticed it yourself.  You may even have asked me about it.  Or wondered in stoic silence.   “Whatever will she do?” you asked yourself.  I am sure it has been weighing on you — heavily.  As well it should.

“FiftyFourAndAHalf,” that’s the problem.  It’s right up there at the top of the page.  Yup, the blog’s name.   I called it that in a fit of pique at the GOP who were going to take Medicare away from everyone under 55.  Starting with me.  It seemed grossly unfair when I was younger.  Like, you know, six months ago.

But, ummmm.  I’m not FiftyFourAndAHalf anymore.  I’m not even FiftyFourAndThreeQuarters, either — the name my son, Jacob, has been calling me.   Because my 55th birthday is here.  I tried to stop it, but, well, I failed.  My bad.

I didn’t know what to do.  I thought of taking a poll:

 

 

I must admit I was afraid of your answers.  More importantly, I was afraid that I had more poll questions than readers.

But then I saw this:

John Gorka, singing “People My Age”

It helped me make my decision.  It stiffened my resolve.  I wish I had thought of it sooner.  Like 20 years ago.  But back then, I didn’t know that people my age had started looking gross.

So I’m not going on to FiftyFive.  I don’t want to be my age, because people my age have started looking gross. 

I’m sticking with FiftyFourAndAHalf.

Man! I look better already.

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January 14, 2012 · 0:00

Connections

My sisters and I never saw eye to eye; rather we heard heart to heart through our telephone receivers.  We lived a good distance away for most of our lives.  And so our connections, close as they were, were nearly always via long distance calls.

The ear pieces on the phone grew increasingly warm and comforting with each laugh, each tease and each word we spoke.  We spent hours on the phone, twisting the curly, stretched cord around our body parts, spilling out our hearts and our triumphs and our woes.  But there is no record, no evidence, and sadly fewer clear recollections.

So I made up some memories.

*     *     *

I began to question the wisdom of this trip as soon as the line went dead.

The call Thursday night was unexpected.  Sam and Dave – customers from the burger joint I’d worked in back home — had tracked me down in Boston.  I’d left home six months earlier, and was surprised that the guys had found me.  They had said they were in Boston often and promised to look me up – but so had a lot of people.

Six months away from home hadn’t been nearly as fun as I expected my “coming of age” to be.   I hesitated to admit that I was lonely and would love some company.  But I hadn’t even thought about Sam and Dave – forgotten them, in fact.  Well, I barely knew them to begin with.  Sam was tall, blond, nice smile.  A well done hamburger with fries; Dave was shorter with shaggy brown hair that he often pulled back.  He liked his cheeseburger rare with onion rings.  Both drank Coke.  One of them drove my favorite car, a 1974 Datsun 240Z.  Blue.

“Great, we’ll pick you up Saturday at 10,” one of them said.  Was it Dave?  He and Sam were on separate extensions and kept finishing each other’s sentences like an old married couple.

“Yeah, Steve gave us the address along with your number.   See you Saturday!” said the other – Sam, I guessed.  And then they hung up.

They didn’t leave a number so I couldn’t call them back.  For that matter, they didn’t leave their last names.  First names, a car (cool as it was) and burger preferences.  That was all I knew.  Yet I had just agreed to spend the weekend with them at the Cape.

At only 19, I hadn’t done too many stupid things with guys yet.  So I called my older sister, Judy, 24, who had.

“This is ridiculous,” I told Judy, pacing back and forth across my tiny apartment like a bobcat in the zoo. “I can’t possibly go.  I don’t know who they are.  And I can’t possibly call them back – they didn’t leave their number.  They didn’t leave their last names.  They didn’t even tell me where I just agreed to go.   God, this has all the makings of a Hitchcock picture.”

“Are you Tippi Hedren or Janet Leigh?”  Jude roared at her own joke.  “You’ve known these two cute guys for three years and never went out with them?  Either of them?  Or both of them – together?” she teased.  “God you’re boring.  You’d be Doris Day in a Hitchcock movie.”

“I’m just going to have to talk to them when they get here on Saturday.”

“Ok,” said Jude, swallowing her laugh. “You’ll talk to them on Saturday.  Good plan,” she burst out again, “especially because you can’t talk with them before that because you didn’t get their number,” she said, gasping for breath.

I began to relax.  Somehow, when I told my troubles to Judy, they stopped being problems and became situation comedy.

“You’re a huge help.  I’ll call you back next time I need abuse.”

“Anytime,” Judy said, hanging up.

I spent Friday at work bouncing between laughing and worrying.  I didn’t pack.  Of course I wouldn’t go with them – I didn’t even know their last names!

At 10 am Saturday the doorbell rang.  “Shit.”

“We’re here,” Dave or Sam said through the intercom system.  Another reason not to go – I couldn’t keep them straight.  I buzzed them in, and took a deep breath.  I still didn’t know what to do.

Did it take an hour for them to climb the two flights or were they upstairs in a flash?  Suddenly I felt queasy.  “Oh God,” I thought as I shut the bathroom door, “what would Judy do?”  I sat on the toilet for the longest time, trying not to panic.  At last, I smiled, shrugged and said “oh, what the hell.”  I walked back into the main room and said “I’m not quite done packing, but I’ll be just a minute.”

I threw a bathing suit, a change of clothes, and a couple of other things in a backpack.  “There’s just one thing,” I said, smiling at my dates,  “I’d love to drive the Z.”

*     *     *

Me, Judy, and Beth, a while ago

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December 22, 2011 · 0:00

Public Service Reprise********** Gizmos and Gadgets

It’s not because there is so much yet to do for Christmas that I’m reposting this piece.  Nope.  The elves never arrived so I’m done with Christmas.  Whatever isn’t done, well, you know.

But I thought it really important to re-post this piece from early June (since clearly only one person read it). I believe it is my CIVIC DUTY to inform you that, when you are tearing your hair out over your new gizmos and gadgets,  you are NOT alone.  AND THAT YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Whatever it is you want to celebrate!

******************************************************

GIZMOS AND GADGETS

In the last two years electronics manufacturers replaced  product instruction booklets with human tears — mine.

Until 2008, each computer, radio, TV, cellphone, or other electronic device had a little booklet that told all about the product I’d just bought.  Important things.  How to turn it on, for example.  It is not always that obvious, you know.  The booklet also told me how to turn it off, and how to mute it.  That last one’s especially important given the current crop of advertisements, mostly for other gadgets that won’t have booklets either.

Those were the days.  I remember fondly that I would pull out the instruction booklet first.  If I’d had any inkling that the lines and those pages would soon disappear, I would have treated it better.  But when I’d get something new, I’d push the manual aside, heartlessly toss it to the floor and completely ignore it.  I would turn on the gizmo and figure out exactly how to make it do just what I wanted done.  I could always figure out how to use it, even the most complicated ones.  The instructions were then put into the drawer next to the oven with the rest of the booklets.  That drawer collapsed in 2009 under the weight of instruction booklets for the 4,153 electronic devices we’ve purchased since we bought the house in 2002.

Now, I understand the need to cut back on paper usage.  I am all for saving rainforests I’ll never see, limiting emissions that may or may not be causing global warming.  I’m into all that sort of environmental crap, really I am.  But  they cut out my little booklets at exactly the same moment that they made the damn gizmos completely incomprehensible.

When manufacturers first removed my instruction booklets, I was brave.  I didn’t cry for the first three or four hours while I pushed every frickin’ button on my new cell phone, hoping in vain that one of them might just turn it “ON.” Naturally, the power button was the one I didn’t press because that had a picture of what clearly represented “OFF” and the bloomin’ button is RED.  Am I the only person who ever played Red Light/Green Light????  RED IS STOP.  GREEN IS GO.  Jeez.

OK, I know I should have gotten over this particular problem with my very first Windows product, but I didn’t.  And I won’t.  Not ever.  And I will never feel stupid for not pressing OFF when I want ON.

Still, I do try to not be a crybaby.  And sometimes I make it — for a while.

I didn’t cry for 6.5 hours when my new “plug in and use” laptop couldn’t be.  Equally exasperating, this laptop had no installed software that would have permitted use once it was plugged in.  As I sobbed to a Geek Squad Rep at Best Buy, I was told “there’s no software on it because people like to individualize.”

“I’m pretty sure,”  I said, pulling my head out of the paper bag I’d been breathing into, “that Neanderthals like me who buy products advertised to be ‘plugged in and used’ aren’t all that into individualization.”

It has gotten to the point where sometimes I don’t even bother crying.  I just throw stuff.  In fact, hospital emergency rooms see a 5-fold rise in shoulder, elbow, wrist and foot injuries during the holiday season as consumers throw, fling or kick their electronic Christmas gifts across the room, trying to miss the Christmas tree it took them so damn long to hang lights on.   Personally, I worry that I might decapitate relatives who wander into my house within 24 hours of a technology acquisition, when I’ve just sent something flying.

So all that is left for me to do now is cry.  And I do.  Every single time I buy something.  I’m considering going for a Guinness World Record for “Most electronics-related crying jags.”  Other contenders should just throw in the towel.  Or a tissue.

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June 20, 2011 · 0:00

Corrective Packaging

The problem became clear to me when I was naked, wet and in someone else’s shower.  Too late, I realized that I had forgotten my shampoo and conditioner upstairs in the guest room.

As problems go, this one wasn’t huge.  There was an assortment of products right there on the back of the tub.  At least eight bottles of stuff.  But I didn’t know what was in any of them because I have presbyopia.  Because I’m old.  Ish.

Presbyopia.  Sounds like a terminal disease or a religious sect, doesn’t it?  It’s neither.  It means my eyes are aging along with the rest of my generation.  Mostly, I see fine with my glasses.  But mornings are impossible:  first, I hobble out of bed, my joints cracking like pinecones in a fire. Once I get into the shower, I can’t tell the difference between shampoo, conditioner and body wash.  I make mistakes.

And it’s not just in-shower products.  And it’s not just in the morning.

I can’t tell my day from my night creams, so presbyopia may actually endanger my life.  The day cream has SPF to keep me from contracting skin cancer, which is vital to me as an Irish-American still awaiting my first tan.  The night cream has something in it to make me look years younger.  I’ve been using it since 1987, and if it worked as advertised I should just now be developing acne.

I don’t want to get them confused.  But I do.

Women with sagging butts still want what hasn’t relocated to look nice, you know.  In fact, it becomes increasingly more important as other body parts fail.  And we want to know that we are using the right stuff in the right order.  We need the “turn-around” cream first and then the regular moisturizer.  In that order!  We can no longer afford to do it the other way around by accident.  And we tend to shampoo first and then condition.

Products designed to be used by wet naked people who aren’t wearing their glasses in the shower should have HUGE printing.  They do not.  It is completely unfair.

No.  It’s worse; it’s discrimination.  Ageism.  Chauvinism.  Some “ism” or other.  This packaging bigotry prevents aging folks from making intelligent choices, minimizes their independence, and undermines their confidence.  Sometimes, it also makes their hair sticky.

It’s “Boomerism.”  Boomerism is “the practice of ensuring through packaging that Baby Boomers, who never were as great a generation as their parents because there were no Nazis for US to fight, will feel inept while grooming.”  Boomerism.  You heard it here first.

I blame the packaging industry for my distress.  I should sue.  Or go into assisted living.

Twenty-somethings – the folks who obviously design these labels – they don’t have presbyopia.  They can’t even spell it.  We aging boomers still have some cash to spend (at least until they take away our Social Security).  We need assistance:

LARGE FONT PRINT!!

The first company that trades on this need will reap HUGE REWARDS.

Imagine the advertising campaign, filmed in a low grade blur:  An attractive 50-something Diane Keeton-type takes off her glasses, steps into the shower, and squints at the 10 bottles on the back of the tub.  She chooses a bottle.  The camera shot changes to one of just the shower curtain.

“This doesn’t seem right,” she says, after applying something to her hair.  Her hand reaches out for her glasses and they disappear back inside.  We hear:

“Oh No!!”

She can now see that she’s just massaged Nair Hair Remover into her scalp.  The camera moves to a lineup of legibly labeled products on her sink, next to her glasses.

Now, this is my idea, my design.  So any of you advertising folks need to know that I expect a percentage of the excess profits from products that cannot be accused of Boomerism.  And I know just what I’ll do with my share of the proceeds.

I’m getting Lasik eye surgery so that I can read my stupid alarm clock.

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June 17, 2011 · 0:00

Sharon, Paul, Bob and Me

When Sharon Osborne, wife of Ozzie, appeared on the cover of AARP Magazine, I should have known changes were coming at the Association of American Retired People.  I should have been afraid.  I should have opted out.  I should also have realized I have not yet retired.

But I’ll admit that I did not see today’s news coming – that AARP would ever agree that Social Security can be cut.  Drugs must be involved in both decisions by AARP.  And we are not talking about legal substances.

Tonight, I’m embarrassed to admit that I am a member of AARP.  A reluctant member of AARP, but a member nevertheless.  You know those commercials that are playing now?  The ones with Betty White, talking to me and other reluctant middle-aging folks who don’t really want to be in AARP, telling us to “GET OVER IT.”  Well, recently I did get over it. Betty White didn’t convince me.  But still, I joined.

Shit.  Why didn’t I listen to Woody Allen and not join any organization that would have me?  Maybe it was because he was stealing the line from Groucho Marx.

But it was the magazine that seduced me.  Or rather, it was the cover boys who did.

When I reached my 50th birthday, AARP sent me Paul McCartney – Paul was my very first crush!  How did they know?  It’s a little bit scary that they knew about me and Paul, but I figured they’d sent me a sign in a good, wholesome way — I mean, they didn’t send me Ringo.

When I was seven years old, the Beatles had just been on Ed Sullivan, and for months afterwards I used to play “Married Beatles” with my friends, Laura, Lucy and Lisa.  They were sisters who had four wonderful apple trees in their yard, and we each got a Beatle whom we could keep in our individual tree and with whom we could smooch.  Hey, I was seven.  I didn’t realize that there could be better things to do with Paul in that tree.  Well, we fought for Paul, and somehow I usually won him.  (John’s marriage to Cynthia was something we knew, even at that age, wouldn’t last.  And Yoko would have confused the hell out of us.)

So when I got that first magazine, I knew my days of holding out against aging, against AARP, against Paul, were numbered.

And then came other heartthrobs:  Harrison Ford.  An adult crush.  Bob Dylan, an early hero.

Robert Redford, my early teen crush, appeared in January to help me celebrate my 54th birthday. He sealed the deal.  I’d had a crush on him before he was even a star, when he was in Inside Daisy Clover and This Property is Condemned with Natalie Wood, before he’d so much as met Paul Newman.    And Robert hasn’t aged too well, either.  So he makes me feel better about that, too.  The list of the crushes of my life goes on across the cover pages of AARP Magazine.  The list for men is equally impressive, but that’s for them and their apple tree memories.

And so on my 54th birthday as I read the interview with Robert (or Bob as I called him in my later day apple tree-equivalent),  I thought:

“You know, this organization is doing good things.”

And I continued to think (hey, I can multi-think!):  “They will protect me in my dotage, when I need Social Security and Medicare!”  And so I joined.

So imagine my surprise when I got this month’s issue:  Sharon Osborne was on the cover.  I can say with absolute certainty:  I never had a crush on Sharon.  I never had a crush on Ozzie.  In fact, I never quite understood why anyone would spend their time with either of them without mind altering drugs.

So as an official AARP member, I have a question:

Who put Sharon Osborne on the cover of AARP?

Probably more importantly, however, are these questions:

Who the HELL at AARP decided that it is okie dokie  to

(1) totally abandon  their position on Social Security and Medicare that AARP has held since the Civil War (“LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE!” is what I recall seeing on their posters and position papers);

(2) screw over AARP’s entire middle-aging clientele, including newly minted and especially funny bloggers, and

(3) support cuts in Social Security that will leave millions of elderly people in poverty in years to come?

The answer to these questions?  They obviously inhaled.  A lot.  Residual effects from illegal drugs ingested between 1968 and 1978 have begun to take control of their minds.  And that is not my fault.  Don’t penalize me and my fellow middle-agers  for your folly.

We middle-aging folks need to get a hold of the folks who are reconsidering their positions on Social Security and give them a nice California Chardonnay to clear their heads.  Because we need the real folks at AARP to get back in charge.

Sharon and Ozzie will do okay without you.  The rest of us won’t.

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