In which Gene reflects on his old age

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Holy crap — in two days I'll be 43? Really?
That's some major league, new jack crap there.
I just learned that I am part of Generation X. Believe it or not, I never knew that — I thought that was the generation that followed me. So, yeah, that makes me feel just a teensy bit younger.

So, some of the people who were born in the same year as me, the distant 1966:
Michael Imperioli, Patrick Dempsey, Cindy Crawford, Tone Loc, Edie Brickell, Robin Wright Penn, Luke Perry, Stephen Baldwin, Janet Jackson, Julianna Margulies, J.J. Abrams, Mary Stuart Masterson, John Cusack, Matthew Fox, Halle Berry, Adam Sandler, David Schwimmer, Helena Bonham Carter, Salma Hayek, Sinead O'Connor, Kiefer Sutherland.

As I get older, I start to have that empathy with my elders. Not, as I had suspected when I was younger, because I feel old and creaky... but because I don't feel old and creaky and now realize what stress stereotypes can inflict on people my age. Seriously, I am now more than twice my father's age when I was born. And I don't feel old enough to have a child of my own.

Still, math is a scary thing. I'm likely more than halfway done with my life. (And the spectre of having been, possibly, close to death already is still there.) I tend to find myself measuring out time and whether or not I've accomplished the correct things by now, as if there's a concrete road map for life. I tend to look at my career — pretty much stalled — and think I've lost the battle. But then there are people at my office who are 20 years my senior or more, and I realize that we all fall into those sticky webs and sometimes we can't climb out.

Am I ever gonna be a millionaire? Not unless I win the lottery, and I don't even play that. Will I ever get married? That's not at the top of my list, which is good 'cos it's likely not ever gonna happen. Will I ever get off this damned planet? Probably not.

But you know what? I'm going to Disneyland tomorrow night, and I'm gonna feel like a 13 year old. I don't know how a huge multinational conglomerate grasping for every last cent in my pocket manages to do it, but dang if they don't.

I may not get carded anymore these days, but at least I can drink whatever I want.

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