Holy Half Century, Batman!
Jan. 13th, 2009 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI know I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.
I have a vivid memory of lying in bed when I was kid of (probably) about ten, thinking about a television program I'd just watched. It was some network special about the year 2000 and all the technological wonders that might exist at the dawn of the 21st century. I don't remember what most of them were, though I'm sure they were the usual grab bag of complete misconceptions about The Future.
The part that is burned into my memory is calculating how old I would be in the then-unimaginably-distant year of 2000 A.D. I realized, with wonder and horror, that I'd be forty-one years old. Why--I'd be OLD! I really couldn't wrap my mind around what it would be like to be that age, in some unforeseeble future. I figured I'd be married--that was a given. Everyone got married! If the thought of kids entered my mind, it was as something that would just happen, getting older. It wasn't something I was anticipating, if you know what I mean.
The year 2000 came and went. And now it's 2009 and I've turned fifty. Half a century. We still don't have flying cars, orbital habitats or lunar bases. Jetpacks exist, but they're little different from those that existed around the time I was born. Impractical toys, nothing more. On the other hand, we have the internet and CDs and DVDs and iPods and iPhones and mobile GPS devices which will give you verbal directions while you drive your car. We have genetic engineering and nanotechnology growing more advanced by the day. It's not THE future, but it's certainly A future.
And I'm half a century old. I don't feel it. I like to think I don't look it either, but maybe I'm kidding myself. Oh, I get a twinge in the joints of my big toes occasionally due to arthritis and bone spurs. But otherwise I'm in good health. I'm heavier than I was as a young man--but then, as a teenager and college student I weighed all of 135 lbs and looked like a strong wind could blow me over. It wasn't until my mid-20s that I filled out. Years of office work have thickened my middle, though I'm working on that now.
I don't look like that skinny kid, and I never will again. But inside? I still feel like that kid. I suspect that when I'm 90, I'll still feel like that kid on the inside, no matter how old I look on the outside.
Would that 10 year-old kid be pleased or appalled by who he turned into? I like to think he'd be happy with it. No, I'm not a rich and successful scientist or astronaut or writer. But I'm happy. And I'm happily married, even if it took me until I was 40 to find the woman I wanted to marry. (A secret I've only ever shared with her: I knew, deep down inside, that none of my previous relationships was going to go the distance. I might've stayed with the last one before![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy, but I'd have been settling. In retrospect, that would have been a mistake. So the fact that she dumped me was a good thing.
It's been a long, crooked road from that 10 year-old's bed to where I am now. Had I not gone to the college I did and met my long-time (albeit distant now) friends John, Julie & Dan, I'd never have met the girlfriend who eventually got me to move from Virginia to Oregon. Had I not met new friends out here in Oregon, some online, and some of whom shared my interest in writing, I'd not have been invited to join a writers group. Had I not joined that group, I wouldn't have met Rory & Kami, a couple of people who have made my life much richer for knowing them (and their friends--they have the greatest assortment of friends!). I also wouldn't have met Mary Rosenbloom.
I wouldn't have been invited to a Fourth of July party at Mary's house--and I wouldn't have met the beautiful woman with the lustrous, curly dark hair, brilliant smile and marvelous cleavage. I talked to her at that party, but I didn't work up the nerve to ask her out before I was dragged away (my ride was leaving). But I remembered she told me she worked for a downtown law firm that specialized in labor law. So the next Monday I cracked open the yellow pages and figured out which law firm it probably was. On my lunch hour I walked over there and asked for her. (I only intended to establish that, yes, she worked there. The receptionist called her up, though, so I couldn't flee--much as I wanted to.)
She didn't know me from Adam at first. She remembered me when I reminded her of where we'd met. She also turned down my invitation to dinner. But a couple or three years later I turned 40 in mid-January, and a little over a month later, in late February, we got married. That's a long, long chain of "what if's", any one of which might have prevented us ever meeting. Scary.
That was ten years ago. So today (technically, yesterday now) I turned 50. And at the end of February, we'll celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. And that, boys and girls, is the best birthday present of all.
I have a vivid memory of lying in bed when I was kid of (probably) about ten, thinking about a television program I'd just watched. It was some network special about the year 2000 and all the technological wonders that might exist at the dawn of the 21st century. I don't remember what most of them were, though I'm sure they were the usual grab bag of complete misconceptions about The Future.
The part that is burned into my memory is calculating how old I would be in the then-unimaginably-distant year of 2000 A.D. I realized, with wonder and horror, that I'd be forty-one years old. Why--I'd be OLD! I really couldn't wrap my mind around what it would be like to be that age, in some unforeseeble future. I figured I'd be married--that was a given. Everyone got married! If the thought of kids entered my mind, it was as something that would just happen, getting older. It wasn't something I was anticipating, if you know what I mean.
The year 2000 came and went. And now it's 2009 and I've turned fifty. Half a century. We still don't have flying cars, orbital habitats or lunar bases. Jetpacks exist, but they're little different from those that existed around the time I was born. Impractical toys, nothing more. On the other hand, we have the internet and CDs and DVDs and iPods and iPhones and mobile GPS devices which will give you verbal directions while you drive your car. We have genetic engineering and nanotechnology growing more advanced by the day. It's not THE future, but it's certainly A future.
And I'm half a century old. I don't feel it. I like to think I don't look it either, but maybe I'm kidding myself. Oh, I get a twinge in the joints of my big toes occasionally due to arthritis and bone spurs. But otherwise I'm in good health. I'm heavier than I was as a young man--but then, as a teenager and college student I weighed all of 135 lbs and looked like a strong wind could blow me over. It wasn't until my mid-20s that I filled out. Years of office work have thickened my middle, though I'm working on that now.
I don't look like that skinny kid, and I never will again. But inside? I still feel like that kid. I suspect that when I'm 90, I'll still feel like that kid on the inside, no matter how old I look on the outside.
Would that 10 year-old kid be pleased or appalled by who he turned into? I like to think he'd be happy with it. No, I'm not a rich and successful scientist or astronaut or writer. But I'm happy. And I'm happily married, even if it took me until I was 40 to find the woman I wanted to marry. (A secret I've only ever shared with her: I knew, deep down inside, that none of my previous relationships was going to go the distance. I might've stayed with the last one before
snippy, but I'd have been settling. In retrospect, that would have been a mistake. So the fact that she dumped me was a good thing.It's been a long, crooked road from that 10 year-old's bed to where I am now. Had I not gone to the college I did and met my long-time (albeit distant now) friends John, Julie & Dan, I'd never have met the girlfriend who eventually got me to move from Virginia to Oregon. Had I not met new friends out here in Oregon, some online, and some of whom shared my interest in writing, I'd not have been invited to join a writers group. Had I not joined that group, I wouldn't have met Rory & Kami, a couple of people who have made my life much richer for knowing them (and their friends--they have the greatest assortment of friends!). I also wouldn't have met Mary Rosenbloom.
I wouldn't have been invited to a Fourth of July party at Mary's house--and I wouldn't have met the beautiful woman with the lustrous, curly dark hair, brilliant smile and marvelous cleavage. I talked to her at that party, but I didn't work up the nerve to ask her out before I was dragged away (my ride was leaving). But I remembered she told me she worked for a downtown law firm that specialized in labor law. So the next Monday I cracked open the yellow pages and figured out which law firm it probably was. On my lunch hour I walked over there and asked for her. (I only intended to establish that, yes, she worked there. The receptionist called her up, though, so I couldn't flee--much as I wanted to.)
She didn't know me from Adam at first. She remembered me when I reminded her of where we'd met. She also turned down my invitation to dinner. But a couple or three years later I turned 40 in mid-January, and a little over a month later, in late February, we got married. That's a long, long chain of "what if's", any one of which might have prevented us ever meeting. Scary.
That was ten years ago. So today (technically, yesterday now) I turned 50. And at the end of February, we'll celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. And that, boys and girls, is the best birthday present of all.
