Today I turned fifty. Five decades. Half a century. In many ways I look at that number and am amazed. Do I really feel like fifty years have gone by? No, not really. I was conscious for all of it. It's not like I was in a coma for ten to fifteen years and am missing a gap of time there. But in many ways it feels like only a whisper of time has passed since I got married, had a daughter, or moved into this house.
Even those numbers are getting into the significant range. I've been married 26 years, my daughter is 23, and we've been in this house something like 15 years (I can never remember exactly). The length of my career is also an impressive number. Come this May I will have been working in the IT field, for pay, 30 years.
But despite all this evidence that I am indeed fifty, that reality seems somewhat surreal to me. I made the decision in my twenties that while I may grow old, I wouldn't "be" old. It's more of a mental attitude than anything. My refusal to let my brain calcify, to think to myself "I'm too old to do x or y". The joke over the years has been that I keep my mental age at twelve.
I still play video games. I still quip-and-quibble with my daughter like we're a couple of teenage siblings determined to one-up each other. Technology still fascinates me, and I still salivate over the latest James Bond film. Pizza rolls remain one of my favorite foods.
Another way I've tried to keep my mind limber is through music. While I still have my favorite groups from my earlier years such as The Police, Rush, and Genesis, I've also found plenty of new music to listen to over the years. I like Lady Gaga and Evanescence, and more recently have gotten into Maroon 5 and Adele.
I have to admit that this anniversary was a small part of the reasoning for getting braces. I liked the idea of doing something at this age that most people do in their teens. It's my way of thumbing my nose at old age and saying "You ain't the boss of me!"
But there is a darker side of fifty. It is the peak of the hill, and looking ahead I can see the path down is much shorter than the path up. If my father's life is any indication, I might expect to make it to my seventies. We were watching Grumpy Old Men last night, and one of the topics of conversation between Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon was the best way to die. Someone who dies in their sleep was counted as "lucky." I can only hope that when that time comes I can hope for the quickest and easiest way to go like they did. Right now I'm feeling more like Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner: "I want more life, f**ker."
Despite that I'm seeing lots of signs of my impending old age. Just this week I've taken to leaving my cell phone someplace and then an hour later patting my pockets and asking myself where it is. Gray is slowly creeping its way into my facial hair, and I'm becoming more of a curmudgeon by the minute. In fact I'm ready for a cane, just so I can start using it to whack those who dare to annoy someone of my advanced years.
Things that have been on the back burner in my brain are now becoming more of a potential reality. The prospect of retirement seems much closer than it did a year ago, and I've already been thinking about how to shore up our plans for that day. I'm realizing that I'm getting closer to the day when I'll be "too old" to use my ladder. To be honest, I'm kinda looking forward to that. I hate getting up on that thing.
But really, not much is going to change after today. The daughter and I are going tomorrow afternoon to see the latest Die Hard movie and I'm looking forward to that. I plan to add Skyfall to my Blu-Ray collection soon, and I will be spending some more time on my Xbox 360 in the near future. So while some things will change, some things will remain the same. Still, it's a good time to reflect and adjust my thinking. Perhaps now that I'm past my fiftieth year I'll upgrade my mental age to thirteen. After all, it's high time I started acting like a teenager.
