The end of an era

Recently the earth completed yet another successful trip around the sun without going off course and careening into endless space (as I fully expect to happen each year when this momentous event draws near) and I grudgingly carved another notch in my own personal wooden pole.  The notches now number 39 and it will only be a matter of time (one year, to be exact) before they round off and I will start my fifth decade!  Of course, many well-meaning – though sometimes delusional, methinks – optimists have started saying that all hope is not lost yet because 40 is the new 20.

Entering your forties seems like the end of an era, and yet, when I look back on my twenties I am not sure I want to go back there again in my forties.  Life back then consisted of two main objectives – you wanted to drink and party as much as your parents claimed you did, and you wanted to sweep as many girls off their feet (figuratively) as your ego imagined you to be capable of.  Luckily both of these were not mutually exclusive – in fact, if you played your cards right you could achieve both objectives with a single stone, as it were.  I speak, of course, mainly for myself.  It is quite possible that there were some amongst my peer group for whom these were perhaps not the primary objectives, and for all I know they may have wasted their time in other trivial pursuits like academics or career planning.  For them it could very well be a godsend if the 40s indeed turn out to be the new 20s.

But I, as I said, am not quite that keen to go back in time.  Although drinking and partying may have been relatively easy, sweeping girls off their feet took some doing.  For one, the quest for size-zero was not yet a national obsession so many of the feet tended to be firmly grounded by the weight of the … er … um … responsibility they carried.  Secondly, you had to put in efforts to first meet and chase the girls you wanted to sweep off their feet – its not like today when the girls are themselves doing much of the chasing and sweeping (and I must say that I firmly applaud this trend – why should guys have to do all the hard work!?).  Thirdly, the girls were much smarter then (than guys, I mean) and could see through most of the usual approaches guys took.  For example, if a guy walked up to a girl in college and said “I want your friendship”, she knew immediately that it was not just “friendship” he was asking for.  I didn’t do that (of course) but I did do other equally dumb things like going up to a girl and telling her in my smoothest voice – “I’m sorry, but I seem to have forgotten your name” – and getting a curt and icy “you didn’t know it” response for my trouble.  Still, it could have been a slap so I suppose I should consider myself lucky.

As if all that chasing was not hard work enough, one also had to put in additional efforts to keep the pretense of being a gentleman.  Girls had not yet been brainwashed by popular chick magazines into thinking that they must like “bad boys” – so no swearing, no checking out other girls, and certainly not a hint of naughtiness (luckily all this came – comes – naturally to me – heh!).  Then again one had to endure much torture in the form of shopping and dancing, and not just that but one had to pretend to enjoy it as well.  Apparently it’s not enough to just do it (contrary to what Nike has us all believe) but one must be seen to enjoy doing it too.  Now, I don’t mean to deny the existence of those of the masculine gender who actually do enjoy both these activities – there may well be one of two of those but I am certainly not of their number.  It’s not that I could not shake a leg or two without stepping on any pretty toes but it would be stretching the imagination a bit to think that I could have given one Mr Astaire a run for his money.  And as for shopping, the less said the better – let’s just say that I would rather have had a root canal performed by a mad dentist on my only surviving tooth.

So now as I near 40 I have no more wish to chase or be chased – indeed, even if I wished it, any chasing I did would have to be at a sedate, shuffling pace that even a reasonably alert turtle would find easy to elude.  Let me also put on record that any girls thinking of chasing me now need look no further than the couch in front of the TV, but they need to bring along two tall glasses of chilled beer and a plate of fried fish if they hope to get anywhere.  And keep in mind – no more shopping trips and no more dancing – unless you count snapping my fingers in time to imaginary retro music only I can hear (or as a signal to get more beer) as dancing.  Also, please note that I no longer feel the need to listen to music at volumes comparable to jet engines at take-off, or to suffer in dimly-lit, stuffy, smoky and densely packed matchboxes that serve minuscule fragments of finger food at rates that would make Warren Buffet cringe.  Further, I can no longer finish a steak at Zamu’s or elsewhere, so you must be responsible for your own left-overs;  I do not wish to get drunk enough to roar off at a moment’s notice to an isolated and unsafe quarry outside town at 3 am; and I am perfectly happy if we don’t pick fights with beefy strangers just because you thought they looked at you funny, as long as there is no actual physical contact attempted.  And yes, I will no longer apologize to irate dads (or husbands, for that matter) for bringing you home late … but if all this sounds appealing, who am I to stop you? Just beware of my wife (did I neglect to mention that I am married now?)!

. . .

Ah – the forties – the end of an era, sure; but the beginning of a far better one!

 

P.S.  - This, coincidently, is the 39th post in my blog – I don’t know if that is in any way important or even significant, but I thought I would just point it out because it is unlikely that any of my readers will have actually counted my posts to reach the same conclusion on their own.

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