On Turning 40 - Part One

For the record, I'm 38 and I have just under 18 months to go until this nefarious deadline, but I wanted to start recording my thoughts on the milestone as they occurred, since there is obviously something very wonky that occurs to people (men, especially) when they turn 40. Let the cautionary tale begin.

This weekend, especially, I began to feel the future tug of this upcoming event. But I'll talk about that in a moment. After the events of this weekend, I remembered another tug that occurred late last year - sort of an opening salvo across the bow of impending forty-hood.

I was at the USF basketball game, just doing my normal thing, and I looked up at the cheerleaders. Now, I'm a normal guy, with normal guy preoccupations, and if you place young, nubile, scantily clad women in front of me, well, I may not turn into Mr. Hyde, but I'll certainly take notice in that way that is societally creepy in a person my age. I hide it well. But, on this particular occasion, as I was watching the young ladies shake their tail-feathers, I suddenly saw them very clearly as young ladies with very good dance moves. They reminded me of the girls in my youth group and the daughters of my friends and suddenly it was like someone turned on the lights in a dark room and that thing that looked like a monster in the dark was revealed to be a pile of clothes on a chair. Despite their best efforts, I could not see these cheerleaders as anything other than nice young women with incredible dexterity whose parents were probably incredibly proud of their extra-curricular activities and good grades. Score one for societal normalization, take one hit to my libido.

Now, after that, nothing happened and I went back to not being preoccupied with my age until this last week. Three things happened this week that started to make me ponder my place in the universe. But really, all three stemmed from the first incident.

I was in class on Wednesday night. I'd spent the previous weekend working with a small group of four students making films in San Francisco. We'd bonded. And I'd come to bond with almost everyone else in the class. I was feeling, well, particularly like I was one of the members of this class - not apart from it, not from the outside looking in. And the fact that the class was mostly filled with younger 20 somethings, I guess I was feeling part of that group as well - not actively embracing this youth movement, but not feeling any sort of gap there as well. And then, one of my classmates asked me if I was married in such a way that I knew they were seeing me not as a classmate, but as the old guy who was back in college taking classes. I mumbled some sort of response as the weight of his words sank in and I suddenly felt this huge distance grow between me and my fellow classmates.

I was the old man.

I didn't feel old. In fact, if I had to say in a sort of intellectual way of feeling anything about age, I haven't "aged" a day in probably 20 years. I still think like a 20 year old. I still respond like a 20 year old. I have more wisdom, but I don't feel any older.

I started wondering if I had grown stale or if I had been trying to relive some sort of adolescent phase - stillborn in the early stages of adulthood. In the back of my mind, I began to realize that certain things in my life were very constant and since they provided a continuous backdrop to my existence, they tended to keep me grounded in earlier periods of my life. Mostly in the case of writing, since I've been a writer for more than 30 of my 38 years, I haven't changed much in my attitudes towards the world since I was a kid. I still embrace fantasy, still have the same sense of humor, still feel the tug of adventure and the love of action. In those terms, I feel like a kid constantly, and since that forms such a huge part of my mental focus on a daily basis, I can easily be talking about world politics one moment with all the seriousness of a college professor, and then switch to a discussion about whether the Millennium Falcon is faster than the Jupiter Two with equal passion.

For the first time, I started wondering how other people see me and whether they don't take me seriously because I'm "too old" for the kind of lifestyle I lead - like an adult who refuses to grow up. Peter Pan Syndrome is what I believe they call it.

This lead to a very interesting dream/waking experience last night. I can't remember the dream, but the end result was that when I woke up in the middle of the night, I suddenly thought of my teddy bear for the very first time in years. This was my favorite stuffed animal and so much a part of me that I had carried it everywhere. But it had also been a sort of extension of my youthful belief in myself - an idea that somehow my teddy bear would come to epitomize me in the way that Kermit the Frog epitomized Jim Henson. Except that one year, in a fit of madness, I had given the teddy bear to my girlfriend as a show of how much I loved her and with the thought that someday we could give it to our children. Like I said, madness.

During our very cordial break-up, the only thing I asked from her was that she give me back my teddy bear. She told me that her mother had thrown it out. I accepted that at the time.

When I woke up last night, I suddenly felt incredibly, intensely, pissed off about this. And for the first time ever in the 15 years since I broke up with my ex-girlfriend, I was truly heartbroken and angry at her. I suddenly felt the intense loss of something that had been a symbol of my childhood that I had foolishly given away.

This morning it occurred to me that these are the first of many such things I might start feeling as I approach the big four oh! And if these are the first feelings, I can't imagine how they might escalate as I get closer to the deadline. Either way, as a public service and a warning to all those who will be approaching this milestone in the future, I thought I'd chronicle my journey for you as I react to new events from time to time.

Until next time...