Fifty-Boy
3
Mother Nature's Niece
Then there was the grizzled thing. I hated the word grizzled. Everybody knows what comes next. Go ahead, say it: Old Prospector, Grizzled Old Prospector. Somehow youth was waving goodbye at the station and I was blowing kisses out the caboose like an excited fifth-grader the morning of a field trip.
If Vital Statistaics had an Office of Obsolescence for timetables and schedules, I somehow never got the memo. I suppose nobody had the heart to tell fifty-boy his train had been sidetracked, the whistle was out of steam, and the wheels were falling off. I don't know how I didn't notice the change. I'm chilling in my age-appropriate club car, readingspy novels, sipping coffee, listening to My Generation on the oldies station, and going nowhere fast. A stationary asshole winking out the window thinking he's the one moving.
Fifty was a distress sale, and all the good things, starting with the knees, were going fast. Either way there was no denying, the grizzled stubble on my chin belonged to the geezer in the mirror. Let me tell you, I would've run away and become a pirate, or joined the circus, or even the CIA, if they'd have had me.
Then there was the raunchiest nymph of all, Mother Nature. This is no benign woodland sprite. She had hair sprouting out of every orifice on my body, ears, nose, all down my back, fleeing my head like illegals over the border and popping up everywhere, inside-out. And then, just for a laugh, she grizzles my friend, the beard, with gray.
So I ask her, respectfully, Mother Nature, why not take all the hair, or at least turn everything gray?
Nah... Not her. Warped sense of humor and a mean streak, this Mother.
Her niece, my wife Molly, got me cordless clippers with special attachments for ear and nostril hair.
"Happy birthday. Want me to shave your back?"
"No."
"Trim your eyebrows?"
"No... Thank you."
"How about that ear-hair."
"No. Now stop."
The imp had a wicked grin."Going for the mad professor look, eh?"
Oh boy. To me, women were still the biggest mystery in the universe. Nothing had changed since eighth-grade health class when they took all the girls out and never brought them back.
Shit, nothing had changed since Homer interviewed Ulysses' wife.
But who didn't know that?
Me, apparently.
I existed like a celibate in a cave, with a big-time caffeine bookstore addiction, a wife with a secret admirer, and nobody to talk to about it.
I wondered if AARP had a chat-room, or an oracle, or something.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to toss the temporary membership card, but I was pissed AARP even had my name.
How'd they get it anyway?
Molly? You? My own wife sent AARP my name?
I wanted to register a complaint with the Clerk of Marriages at city hall, or Niagara Falls, or the Elvis Wedding Chapel.
This was not what I signed on for.
"Molly, we need to talk."
 |
| Mother Natue's Niece |
Another great suggestion. So naturally, I bought one, a big black one, and kept it hidden. Then she found it, read it, got mad, hid it from me, and didn't tell me she had it.
I'd hear her laughing in the bathroom.
I didn't know she was in there reading it.
I went nuts looking for it.
She thought the whole thing was hilarious.
I guess it was.
I finally got a pocket journal. The only one left at the Wal-Mart had a quilted floral cover and said, A Girls First Diary on the front. I kept it in my robe. I only wrote in it when I was alone. I wrote in it a lot.
It was a bitch, life at fifty, a long-in-the-tooth, robe wearing black hole on the collapsed star circuit between forty-nine and sixty. It was enough to make you want to lie about your age, or take a nap.
No comments:
Post a Comment