Monday, April 21, 2003

Coming of Age Story

I dreamed I wrote a coming of age novel, except since I am close to 50, it was more of a coming of old age novel.
In nine days, all bets are off and I'll be crossing over the threshold to full crone status.
A crone is any woman 50 or over. I am embracing that harsh sounding word, crone, because I find it's a lot easier in life to ride the horse in the direction he's going.
When I was little I used to like to figure out how old I'd be at the turn of the century.
Forty-six seemed impossibly old back then. Now it seems rather sprightly and youthful.
Fifty is not that bad, considering the alternative.
People today are friskier at 50 than they were 50 years ago. No really, they are.
My girlfriend, who is almost 45, already has 90% silver hair. She also has the body of a muscular 20-year-old, so a little silver doesn't mean jackshit in the whole scheme of things.
Yesterday at dusk we were walking home from a Thai restaurant and she noticed the back of my hair was a different color from the top. That's because the color is fading off the top and I am very grey up there.
I have been pondering getting new color before the dreaded day in nine days, but then I thought fuck it, I earned the grey and I'm going to show it off for a while.
Getting diagnosed with diabetes in October has turned out to be a warped sort of blessing.
I weigh about the same now as I did in my early 30's. My stamina is better from recent weight lifting and exercise, and I feel tons better without refined sugar defining my moods, my energy and my life.
The best part of turning 50 is that my age finally fits my general curmudgeonly disposition.
Now I can call the skateboarding kids outside whippersnappers with some real conviction!
I can start more sentences with, "Why, back in the day when I was a youth..."
Best of all, at 50 a woman is more or less invisible to society's prying eyes.
Surly young men don't register my presence as I pass by, unless I am smoking them off the line at a red light, then they rather appreciate it.
Cops don't believe I could have been driving 85 in a 65 mile zone.
When I kiss my girlfriend in public, nobody believes what their eyes just told them.
When I was a young whippersnapper, I wanted to be fast, bulletproof and invisible.
Now on the eve of turning 50, by God, I am.

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