Heart of Bitterness

Easing gracefully into middle age?

Now that I am on the wrong side of 40, I have finally come to the conclusion that perhaps some lifestyle changes might be in order.

Last weekend, at a memorial service for Donna (my mother's dearest friend since grade 9), Donna's grandson (age approx. 22) introduced me to his buddy (who had come to the rememberance to show respect) in this way:

PALGOLAK, just wait til we are all sitting on the dock looking at the stars this summer! Jimmy here is a first class partay-er. He won't disappoint!

These words froze the blood in my veins. Sure, not so long ago (relatively speaking), I did enjoy sitting on the end of the dock recounting (and listening to) heroic bouts of substance abuse from teenagers, but now I find it a bit boring.

Even painful, unless I am extremely over-refreshed.

I try to visualize myself as a twenty-year old, and how I viewed middle-aged 'partay-ers', but I come up with a blank.

I probably thought they were pretty cool, old folks that smoked ganja.

All I know is that in a Saturday evening cottage situation, these days, the last place I want to be is sitting on a dock with a passel of drunk university students swearing and talking loudly about drugs and alcohol, especially when my reborn aunt and uncle (with visiting church friends) are sitting on another dock 10 metres away trying to enjoy the Northern Lights. (This happened last summer, BTW.)

I just want to lie on a couch (or hammock) and read, whilst sipping a glass of wine. And take the occasional look at the stars, of course.

Last summer, in the aftermath of the multiple murder of a bunch of middle-aged Bandidos, I read a psychological analysis in a paper (I forget which) that posited that the 'biker type' were people that couldn't let go from that party-hearty lifestyle that they had grown accustomed to as youngsters.

I doubt whether John Muscedere (photo above) ever worried about the harmful effects of ganja smoke enough to buy a vapourizer, and he probably still did liquor shots, too. (If you click on the image, you can see the whole photograph, including kids' toys under a tree to the side.)

Am I any different, even though I own a vapourizer and eschew hard liquor? I wonder.

Luckily I have avoided an early death, but still I find it depressing that my young buddy assumes that my behaviour on a Saturday night will have more in common with John Muscedere's than, say, James Wolcott's.