< PREVIOUS ] [ 1990 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Dave Barry wrote a whole book about turning 40. How did he do that?
Turning 40 isn't a milestone like turning 14, when I got the opportunity to work in a 120-degree laundry for 50 cents an hour. Or 16, when I was allowed to buy car insurance and begin a lifetime of supporting agents and actuaries. Or 18, when I could register for a free government-paid trip to Vietnam to be maimed or killed. Or 21, when I could legally go into saloons and debt. Or 30, when I became eligible to run for the United States Senate and receive campaign contributions from S&L executives now under indictment.
But 40, once named The Most Boring Number in the
Universe
by the International Society for the
Computation of Pi to a Quintillion Decimal Places? To get a
book out of that, Barry must have tapped into the
OUTRAGEOUS IDEA BANK, unfortunately limited to Pulitzer
winners who already command high fees, and thus not
available to mere regional columnists. The nasty secret is
that I or you, or even a pet guinea pig whose IQ compares
favorably with Dan Quayle's, could write not just a book
but a WHOLE ENCYCLOPEDIA about even something as banal as
turning on the TV, let alone turning 40, if we were allowed
to access the OUTRAGEOUS IDEA BANK. Write your
congressperson!
Lacking that resource, I turned to popular literature for guidance about how to live my life now that I'm perilously close to becoming a real adult.
What I learned was that I'm supposed to have a Mid-Life Crisis: give up my job, let my hair and beard grow, run off to a remote but scenic locale with a beautiful woman, where I'll do just enough work to get by while I basically hang out -- drink beer, cross-country ski, ride motorcycles, fix old cars, boogie to rock bands -- irresponsible and juvenile stuff like that.
Unfortunately, I've been living that way for the past seven years. Thus my Mid-Life Crisis will have to involve barbers, manicures, shoe-shines, brown-nosing, tailored three-piece suits, joining Rotary and becoming a pillar of the County Republican Central Committee. I'll wait.
Another other popular reaction to turning 40 is to disguise your age. Modern technology makes that simple with Minoxidil and Retin-A. I can't afford those treatments for baldness and wrinkles, but thanks to some computer dabbling, I know about the hexadecimal numbering system, whereby the decimal value 40 is a mere 28 in the 16-based system.
Then there is plain old denial, similar to that practiced by Gary Hart and Nancy Reagan, whereby you just claim you're younger than you are.
They got caught, but I think I could get away with it. Who should know my age better than my own mother? And she just told me she's much too young to have a son who's 40.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1990 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >