Memoirs of a Geezer

Getting old blows.

Saturday night the realities of my ever increasing age finally hit me, and I hate it. I'll still be Thirty Something for a few more years, but I don't really feel my age. Granted, I'm fatter than I've ever been, although not to a point that a season at the gym and a diet without hotdogs and beer couldn't cure. I've found a grey hair or two in my eyebrows, but overall I'm still told that I don't look my age. When my muscles ache it takes a little longer to heal, but I don't have the constant pain that burdens many of my elders. I'm barely familiar with any pop music of the last seven years, but then again there's plenty of good music from the previous 100 years (or the past 200 for that matter) to keep me busy.

On the brighter side of aging, I'm glad that I haven't felt peer pressure for well over a decade. I'm comfortable enough in my own taste to be able to ignore the critics of the what I love. Although I wish I could go back to my high school and college days with a greater focus on my studies, I have a certain amount of useful wisdom that a younger person just can't get from academia. For everything that I've lost with youth, there is certainly something else of value that I've gained. Getting old, however, blows.

Saturday I had the opportunity to spend some time with one of my closest and oldest friends (old in time I've known her, not in age that is). I had a great time catching up with her and talking about this, that and the other, but the time was short. She has a daughter, a house, two dogs, a cat or two, a career with a future AND an active interest in her community which could lead to something resembling a political future. She's really an amazing person. Before 11PM rolled around, however, she was ready to call it a night. I could have talked with her for hours, but I understood. She had a full day, a full week, a full month, so Morpheus was calling.

I went home, and paged through my cell phonebook and realized that most of my friends have grown up like the adults I remember from my childhood. Time spent with their friends fades away in favor of time spent more constructively.

Until a few years ago, almost everyone I knew would get the shakes if our group was apart for more than a month. Most of those friends I haven't seen since Thanksgiving. That event brought us together for the first time in many months. Before long, it will be a year between gatherings, then we will once and for all go our separate ways.

When I left highschool, I was happy to go. There were few people I really wanted to keep in my contact, but the friends of adulthood are different. Friends of youth are usually determined by who you are forced to see most often (the neighbor kid, the person you eat lunch with, someone at your first job). Friends of adulthood are determined by who you WANT to see most often. Eventually time and responsibility catch up with all of us. Eventually it's like childhood again and the friends you work with (or worse... those on the Thursday Night NBC lineup) become those you call your friends. That's probably the best reason for marriage. At least you have a "captive" best friend (providing you can actually get along with somebody THAT close to you).

A wrinkle here or there, some grey where there was once brown or blonde, a need to play a little less hard, these are things that aren't so bad about aging. Missing my friends for months or more at a time -- that's why getting old blows.