The Epiphany of Middle Age

You don’t know you’re middle aged until you get there.

Even then you don’t think it’s happened until an epiphany smacks you.

This usually occurs when you are doing something simple like walking across a college campus, recalling yesterday when you were a scholar, and admiring the lovely co-eds.

Then, you realize that they think you look like their dad instead of their dream guy.

Looking in the nearest glass window, you see that you do look like their dad. That’s when the realization that you are middle age hits like an ocean wave that flips you upside down and forces a quick scramble to retrieve your bathing suit from around your knees.

The ocean wave sensation was overcoming me when my phone rang and the exasperated voice of Peanut Groves blared from the earpiece.

“Did you realize that we are middle aged?” he blurted. Kindred spirits like Peanut and me sometimes have the same sensations simultaneously. It’s kinda cool until he goes bungee jumping.

“According to the Oxford Dictionary we’re not going to be middle aged for another year,” I corrected him. “I had this weird dream where my teeth fell out and looked it up.”

“No, it’s already happening dude,” he replied. “My doctor looks like Doogie Howser, the genius kid doc from 1990’s TV. Having a doctor way younger than you is a sure sign that you are middle aged.”

“This boy can’t grow chest hair,” he continued. “He called me sir and asked when I had my last physical. When I told him 1989, he said I needed one and should get my prostate checked while I was at it.”

Peanut was too wound up to stop talking, “Getting your prostate checked is like drinking legally – you have to be a certain age to do it. I thought that age was, you know, old. I didn’t know it was now.”

When your doctor calls you sir and recommends regular prostate checks, you have officially lost the title of spring chicken.

These kind of epiphany moments are happening way too often. I was talking with this twenty-six year old St. Louis Cardinal baseball fan the other day and tried getting his goat about their blow-up in the 1985 World Series against the Kansas City Royals. It was called the” I-70 Showdown Series” because that’s the interstate linking the two Missouri cities.

He didn’t know what I was talking about. Then I realized that this guy was still feeding from a bottle when the Cards imploded in game seven. The MLB network is the only possible way he could see Cardinal pitcher, Joaquin Andujar, go ballistic on the mound before getting yanked from the game and beating the crap out of the clubhouse commode. That was a great moment in baseball history, for Royal fans at least.

We talked for a few more minutes and it dawned on me that some of the baseball players I had watched play in their prime had retired after a long career as a manager. Some of these guys had even coached their sons, who were now retired ballplayers.

That twenty-six year-old can’t recollect watching the Braves while holding a saran wrapped TV antenna so the players could be seen thru the fuzz of a WTCG broadcast. That’s what Ted Turner called his station when he was cable before cable was cool. In those days the Braves stunk worse than a roadkill skunk.

I remember when Russia was called the Soviet Union and they were trying to conquer Afghanistan. I remember Cheers coming on in prime time instead of syndication. I recall when belle bottom blue jeans went out of style the first time; Georgia Bulldogs games could be viewed for free from a railroad track or a bridge; Pittsburgh’s Pirates were World Series champs; and Terry Bradshaw won Super Bowls instead of talking about them.

I recall when my belly fit inside of my pants instead of over them; people had hair bigger than Rhode Island; car windows had to be rolled down; and Bruce Springsteen hadn’t lived long enough to get a lifetime achievement award at the Kennedy Center.

I remember when Neil Patrick Harris was a kid actor playing Doogie Howser, MD and not a thirty-six year old guest judge on American Idol.

I realized that Peanut hadn’t stopped talking, so I started listening again.

“I woke up this morning and decided I wasn’t going to put up with being middle aged,” he said. “So, I went ice climbing to prove to myself that I could still attack the world with the same reckless abandon as I did twenty years ago.”

“I thought the ice was thawing,” I said. “How’d that go for ya?”

“That’s how I met this new doctor” Peanut said. “Don’t be surprised if your shoulder hurts tomorrow.”