Coping With The Inexorable

In order to move beyond this vexation, I must vent about yet another significant moment in what is euphemistically referred to among my immediate peers as the anschluss of maturation. If for therapeutic purposes only, you understand.

Attempting to move beyond deceptive nomenclature, what we’re talking about here is . . . well . . . aging. Getting older. When the mind becomes set on making promises one’s body can’t keep. When you want to rock & roll until the break of day, but 11:00 p.m. rolls around and Mr. Sleepyhead starts walking toward the parking lot. This trend, when ready, manifests itself with terrible swift sword.

For a guy, especially those of us referred to in the literature as “Peter Pans,” there’s a common signpost. It is confronted somewhere around the onslaught of middle age. It shrieks: Things ain’t the same as they ever was.

Here’s how it works for the typical guy who awakens one day with a newly discovered paunch. He sees some hot young gal out and about, at whom he stares furtively, hopefully without being too obvious. Just when he turns his head, he feels a tap on the shoulder. She’s standing right there. The immediate rush of excitement is just as immediately chilled when she asks, “Mr., do you know where the closest Starbucks is?”

“Mr.! Mr.! Uh, call me Chuck” is what you want to say. What you do say, forlornly, is, “A couple of blocks toward town on your left. Next to the Walgreens.”

In the realm of ouch moments, it is about as significant as it gets.

Not being of the female persuasion, I have no experience as to where the first hit comes for those members of the species. I’ve heard stories of drooping body sections, discussions with beauticians about a Cameron Diaz doo, furtive visits to plastic surgeons in the next town over. But these are anecdotal references only, culled from years of eavesdropping.

For me, the first stunner came about just as I’d crossed the threshold into the nether world of fiftysomething.

At an art opening, a jeune filles about half my age caught my eye. Actually both eyes. I could sense she was looking back. I meandered around the gallery seeking a moment by her side, at which point I’d slyly carpe diem the situation and make some pithy but cute comment which would surely break the ice.

When it came, she looked at me, and said, “I’m sure I know you from somewhere.”

To which, after stopping for a second to make sure my thumping heart wouldn’t rip through my chest, I replied rather feistily, “I sure hope so.”

To which she replied, “Omigod I know . . . you used to go out with my mother, Leslie . . .”

I needed to hear no more. I knew exactly her lineage. Knew I’d been had. Knew there was no looking back.

At least we both saw the humor in the moment, laughed, and moved on into the evening; she with age-appropriate pals, I, chastened, and significantly older than I’d been moments before.

Other signs are commonplace. A two mile jog in the morning feels like a 10K run. You linger by the hair coloring balms at the drug store. You install a security rail by the toilet when you renovate your new home. Metamucil becomes a daily elixir. Comfortable shoes trump stylin’ brogans. Crankiness ensues. Etc., etc, ad nauseum.

It could be worse. Many of us were willing guinea pigs for non-medical chemical and herbal experimentation back in the day. We’re lucky to be here to feel the aches and pains.

Notwithstanding all the comfort one can attempt to muster from the inevitability of it all, it is a bracing kismet. The reckoning is ongoing and does not get abate.

Which is why yesterday morning was especially stressful. When I looked in the mirror, there was a three inch hair growing out of my left ear. It had not been there the night before. Thanks to Norelco, it wasn’t there seconds later.

That its brother will soon show up unexpectedly growing from another bodily orifice is a sensitive subject which I intend to discuss no further.

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