Middle Age Reminders

As I approach yet another birthday there are constant reminders that I am sneaking up on middle age. OK, so maybe I’m not sneaking up on it anymore, I’m boldly knocking at its door. Oh who am I kidding? I fell through that threshold a few years ago but I’m just haven’t grasped that concept yet.

In my head I’m still the same longhaired leaping gnome that I’ve always been, so I’m always surprised by the old bastard who hangs out in my bathroom mirror. It takes me a minute to realize that the older gent with skin tags and grey bedhead is actually me. Fortunately by the time I shower and get dressed I’m done with that lying mirror for the day and my pleasant self-image of carefree youth returns in no time. It’s the upside of having the attention span of a bored five year-old or maybe of all of the brain cells I’ve killed over the years.

Sadly those reminders keep finding new ways to point out that every day I am closer to being 116 years old than I am birth.  I’m used to the subtle things like the little noise I make when I stand up. I’ve accepted that and joke about it when others seem surprised that simply climbing out of a chair requires an audible accompaniment.

A couple of week ago I traveled to Boise to visit my mother and sister. Just saying that I went to visit my mother makes me feel more like the longhaired leaping gnome than the geezer with bedhead. Geezers don’t have moms they have caretakers, right?

It felt good to drive by the places that were the scenes of my misspent youth. I was driving the old streets and listening to the same music on the radio in my truck …except it was tuned to the oldies station now. There was no sign of the lurking geezer when I pulled into my sister’s driveway.

When I was a teenager in Boise we used to stay out as late as we dared doing juvenile things that seemed like adult things to us. Most nights we would end up at an all night diner for a late meal or a milkshake. Just being there with the adults who had just come from bars made us feel like we were part of the nightlife. On a very rare occasion we would attempt to dine and dash just for the fun of it, but we almost always got caught.

The night I arrived in Boise I asked my brother-in-law to join me on a run to a late night diner. We were both hungry and it was a chance to capture a bit of that lost youth feeling again. That’s when those danged reminders of middle age started showing up again.

It started when my well meaning brother-in-law pointed out that I was old enough to order off the senior menu. UHG! I was there to recapture my youth not to get a fruit cup and a side of cottage cheese for $3.99. No wonder old people die of “natural causes”, I suspect that with a diet like that they simply lose my will to live.

When we finished our meal dining and dashing was out of the question because the sound of our bones creaking and the audible grunts we made when standing turned every head in the place. Walking came slowly for us so dashing was out of the question … the geezer was back.

The next day my sister and I decided to go to a sports bar for lunch and some day-drinking because that’s what young people do, right? It turned out that the only sports bar she knew was long since closed (because it’s been a while since she was young) so we went into the place across the street; a lively looking place called Twin Peaks.

For the uninitiated, Twin Peaks is a franchised sports bar for those who think Hooters is too conservative. If you’re a closet pervert who enjoys watching Sports Center while being served nachos by a nearly naked young women, Twin Peaks is the place for you!

Neither of us had ever been to a Twin Peaks so you can imagine our surprise when a hostess younger than my daughters greeted us wearing just her underwear. The entire staff consisted of young women wearing those little slingshots that pass for underwear these days.

The longhaired leaping gnome was nowhere to be found but the old dad in me felt the need to offer the waitress my coat. I concentrated on looking her in the eye so she would know I wasn’t there to ogle her body, which seems important to the geezer in me.

Of course we stayed and I might have sneaked a couple of peeks after consuming a few overpriced cocktails but that was the leaping gnome…. he’s still in there, I’m old dead!