Not Fade Away
December 2nd, 2006 by 
Caroline Spector
There were these two posters that hung in the gym where I used to work out.
Both posters featured a well-muscled septuagenarian — one male, one female. The caption that accompanied each poster was:
Growing Old Is Not For Sissies. 
It’s a pity they didn’t have the obvious corollary poster for people in their forties: Middle Age Is For The Whiny.
I’m not certain what it is about being middle aged that has made me and all my friends so, well, whiny, but I have some theories.
Perhaps it’s the harsh realization that whatever promise you may have in your youth, you’ve either squandered it or you’ve gone as far it with it as you’re going to. Maybe it’s that, after forty-some-odd-years of doing the same stuff over and over, you’re just worn out. Maybe it’s that when you wake up in the morning and think to yourself, “What did I drink last night to make me feel so lousy?” you realize you weren’t drinking the night before.
In short, middle-age is where you have to deal with the unwanted epiphanies of your life.
And there are a butt-load of those suckers. From the shallow and inevitable like loosing hair, going grey with the hair you have left, parts of your body that used to reside in one location have now decamped to areas where they just shouldn’t be, and discovering every seven years or so that your old face has left the building and a new face you’re not at all familiar with has moved in.
And then there’s the stuff that really bites. Loosing parents. Loosing friends. Diseases. Colonoscopies.
You know, good times.
Someone once said that middle-age is the youth of your old age. What a crock. Middle-age is the death of your youth. It’s the mockery of your youth as you see the crumbling of your fecund loveliness. It’s having to take Viagra to do something that you couldn’t stop doing when you were seventeen. It’s buying shoes that are comfortable instead of stylish ones because comfortable is more important. Or maybe it really is the youth of your old-age. It’s really too soon for me to tell.
The one thing that middle-age has given me is an indifference to appearing “cool.” (Since I never was cool, the irony of this doesn’t escape me.) I no longer care if I look dumb doing something.
I took ballroom dancing a few years ago, freed from any expectation that I would be good. (Okay, I didn’t want to suck. But that’s another post.)
Then The Dude talked me into playing bass when he got into playing guitar. (Talk about your classic middle age wig out.) We sometimes play in a band with Brad and Rory. (And, occasionally, with Steve when he’s in town.) It’s fun. I suck at it, but that’s okay.
The thing about being middle-aged is that you are basically banned from being cool. (I think one can recapture “coolness” in old age, but then some young punk always seem to have to coronate that.)
Middle age is a mixed bag. You’re still young enough to have some optimism about the future, but you can see the end of the line rushing toward you. Everything begins to speed up. What used to be an interminable time between holidays and birthdays changes to birthday, birthday, birthday.
What’s my point in all this? I really don’t have one. I just wanted to whine some.
Posted in Caroline, Daily Life, Pop. Culture, The Dude | 
December 2nd, 2006 at 5:14 pm
50 is the new 30.
December 2nd, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Yeah? Only if you can afford the facelifts.
Today is Bitter Caroline Day
December 2nd, 2006 at 5:58 pm
I’d be careful about those facelifts. I saw Barbara Walters for the first time in years and I knew, if those tucks let go, we’d be up to our armpits in jowl.
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 pm
I hate to break it to you, but you’re in trouble with that not looking cool business, Caroline, because you are really hot.
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Yeah, me and Morgan would both do you in a heartbeat.
….Wait… Was that inappropriate?….
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Rachael thinks you’re extremely cool, incidentally.
And if she thinks somebody is cool, they are, by defintion, cool.
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Well, if Rachael thinks you’re cool, per your essay, you must be old!
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Er uhm, I think you’re all mistaking hotness with hot flashes. But, thank you, my fellow brainiacs.
And, non sequitor time, if you guys haven’t seen “End of the Century” (a great documentary about the Ramones), go rent it. Gabba Gabba Hey.
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:05 pm
That’s got to be photoshopped.
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:07 pm
I’m afraid to ask what needs to be photoshopped….
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Caroline, let’s start a club. The Whiny Middle Aged Women club.
Sometime after I hit 50 my genes, which had been playing nicely for all those years, suddenly decided they had had enough, opened the door, and Middle Age came roaring through. I had always planned to be one of those people who let the passage of time wash over me…but I find, to my horror, that I really mind having achy thumb joints and hair that is not graying elegantly, but in disordered sprays; that I would swap the nasty lines in the corner of my mouth for crows’ feet any day. I find I’m vain, with decreasing numbers of things to be vain about, and I find that that pisses me off.
I remind myself that sliding into middle age–and beyond–is far better than leaving a young and glamorous corpse.
December 3rd, 2006 at 2:29 am
This all sounds so familiar. First off, Caroline, you are and always have been cool. It’s inherent in who you are, just accept it. Besides, anyone who plays bass is cool.
Secondly, Ed and I faced the encroaching middle-ages by doing 2 things: ditching the classic rock and only listening to current music (in our case, preferrably alt-rock); and deciding not to go along with the “growing up” trip. I realize that may not be too much of an option for parental types.
Thirdly, I can seriously recommend Philosophy skincare. When I was sick and not taking care of myself, I looked genuinely middle-aged. Now, my skin looks younger than people 10 and 15 years younger than I am, without makeup. It’s great stuff.
December 3rd, 2006 at 11:19 am
Not only am I a member of the ‘Caroline is cool’ club (I kept whining to my husband, ‘do you think Caroline thinks I’m a dweeb?’) but you were described to me by a third party as both ‘cool’ and ‘hip’. But then I think of the crowd we run with, and I admit, the barrier to entry may be a little lower than if we were all, say, performance artists in downtown New York.
Mad, what I most didn’t expect about aging was that not only would my thumbs ache and I get those lines around my mouth that in repose make me look as happy as Whistler’s mother, but that my brain would betray me. I always prided myself that I may not have been, you know, popular or athletic, but at least I had a brain. Now I can’t be counted on to remember a lunch engagement.
December 3rd, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Exactly, Maureen, I have sometimerz disease myself. Sometimes I remember, sometimes…what were we talking about?
December 3rd, 2006 at 1:08 pm
I am totally down with the Middle-aged Whiny Women Club, Maddy. (Is it okay if I call you Maddy?) I think we should get together once a month and everyone has to do a shot for the number of decades we’ve been alive.
And then the real drinking can begin.
I, along with Maureen and Steve, also hate the fact that my memory is shot to hell. Not that it was ever any great shakes to being with. In the middle of doing a chore, I go to another room, and then have to spend a couple of minutes thinking, “What did I come in here for?”
Also, The Dude bought a Wii last week. And now that I have the time to play the new Zelda game I discover that my learning curve for using the Wii-mote nunchucks attachment is ass. Not to mention that it’s killing my arthritic left hand.
Anyway, thanks to you all for the embarrassing assessment of the coolness of me. I am both hugely flattered and mortified. I’m going to do a Dentonian squid response now. You know turn red, then spew my guts out on the floor.
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:58 pm
I tend to prefer Mad, Caroline, but since you’re so cool, you can call me Maddy (it takes the curse off the whiny middle aged English teacher who called me Maddy with a long A when I was in tenth grade).
I’m totally with the idea of drinking heavily, if only to disguise the fact that my memory is in shreds. A few years ago someone told me that menopausal women lose nouns. Specifically nouns. What I want to know is: when I get to the other side of the Estrogen Cha-cha, do I get my nouns back? I envision a tidy linen drawstring bag with my nouns neatly folded…
I used to pride myself on my organization. I made the trains run (mostly) on time at Tor, by God. Now I’m lucky if I can find both my shoes before I have to leave the house. If I remember I have to leave the house at all.
December 8th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Ah, middle age. The time of life where dreams go to die. Just remember: Today may be the best day of the rest of your life. If that knowledge doesn’t put an alcoholic beverage in your mitt, then you’re probably not allowed to drink anymore.
December 8th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Thanks for the post, Bud — I now feel younger than you.
That’s a good thing. For me, anyhow.