I remember being 18 and crossing a street in downtown Philly with my friend, Pat Shovlin, not too far from Philadelphia Community College where we didn’t attend classes everyday. We cut all the time. We were heading over to his apartment that he shared with his Grandmom, a big old place called the Drake, where we would eat cheeseburgers and watch Hollywood Squares. We were 18 or maybe 19 and both hated school, and he started telling me about an uncle who was 30, and he said, “Man, I’ll kill myself before I turn 30.” He was smoking a Winston cigarette because everyone else smoked Marlboro, and he was dead serious, although we both laughed.
And I thought, well that’s a little drastic, but I get it. There were many millions of us then, the whole baby boom thing, all under 30, and 30 just seemed really old.
When I turned 24 I wrote a poem about getting old and gave it to my girlfriend. I still remember the poem, but I wouldn’t dare repeat it.
So one day I turned 30. I was in the Army in Germany and my ex-wife who I gave the poem to a few years earlier held a surprise party, and it didn’t feel so bad being that old. I could still run fast. I wasn’t too old to be a professional hockey player or well-regarded soldier. I hadn’t turned fat and ugly. It wasn’t bad at all. Shoot, I’d felt worse when I turned 24.
I remember thinking about the year 2000 when I was a kid and thinking it seemed just so far away and that I would be 46 and man, imagine how horrible it would be. 46. It just didn’t seem like you could enjoy life at that age.
On my 40th birthday, I carved pumpkins with my sister, my wife, and a friend. I looked at the moon through a telescope. It didn’t feel so bad. Right after that I published a novel and we had our first daughter, and I still wasn’t too old to be a professional hockey player, although on the brink, and I was still thin and could still run fast.
When I was 46 we had another daughter, and she’s about to turn 8. She’s at the beginning and full of herself and very funny, and whenever we walk anywhere together, she always reaches out and takes my hand at the same exact second I reach out for hers, as if our brains are in some kind of magical sync.
She was born in 2001 and George Bush was President. I was born in 1954 and Dwight Eisenhower was President. We watch movies together and laugh at the same stuff. It’s my job to take care of her.
So I fret, I think, I long to get back to work, and I’ll keep on working as long as I can find a job and as long as she needs me to. Age doesn’t matter to me. I can run faster than her. I can beat my other daughter, too, the one who’s 14 now and wasn’t even born yet when I carved pumpkins on my 40th birthday. I coach their soccer teams. I drive them places. I break up their fights and make them laugh. My retirement money is mostly gone.
My wife is 43, but I, and all the kids I grew up with, are in our fifties now. We’re not old.
But sixty, man, that is gonna suck.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
60 is the new 40? Do I get to live to be 98 instead of 78? Because that’s my main worry. I just spent four days at the beach with two girls, one 13, one 14. 14 is the new 6.
hey there jack –
great post – but hasn’t anyone told you? 60 is the new 40! so, we can return to the state of mind that had us thinking about looking at the moon! it is important to keep healthy, but when those old bones do start to creak, so what…the thing is, there are still more 50&60 yr olds than anyone else, so we must polish our vanity – and read teen magazines and smile…your girls will keep you from feeling too sucky – you’ll see…it’s 80 we’ve got to worry about!