Gently into that goodnight:
Life in the middle ages
Where I work, there is a security team. Welcome to post 9/11. The head of this team is a gentleman in his early thirties (or so). This particular individual came up to me this morning and asked me if I had a son and daughter.
No, sure don’t
“Well,” he said, “I went to school with a couple of kids with the same last name and just wondered.”
Gak? Uhm…. Gak? You think I’m old enough to have fathered children YOUR age? I haven’t been dealt such a deadly blow since the first time a kid called me “sir”.
Of course, I did just have a birthday. That doesn’t help but, I mean … gak? Ok, I do have a great deal of gray in my beard, and ok, to me, hip-hop is what happens when I sit too long. Yes, it’s true that I’m starting to do the arm-slide-focus for most of what I read now, and yes, I probably couldn’t name more than six musicians that started after 1990 and yes, I do remember who Barney Miller was.
Gak.
Excuse me, I think I’m going to slip quietly into a mid-life crises.
‘night.
No, sure don’t
“Well,” he said, “I went to school with a couple of kids with the same last name and just wondered.”
Gak? Uhm…. Gak? You think I’m old enough to have fathered children YOUR age? I haven’t been dealt such a deadly blow since the first time a kid called me “sir”.
Of course, I did just have a birthday. That doesn’t help but, I mean … gak? Ok, I do have a great deal of gray in my beard, and ok, to me, hip-hop is what happens when I sit too long. Yes, it’s true that I’m starting to do the arm-slide-focus for most of what I read now, and yes, I probably couldn’t name more than six musicians that started after 1990 and yes, I do remember who Barney Miller was.
Gak.Excuse me, I think I’m going to slip quietly into a mid-life crises.
‘night.
posted by methatiam | 1:28 PM
3 Comments:
My students frequently think I'm old enough to be their mother... I'm not. As I'm fond of saying I'm barely old enough to have been their babysitter (except that I started babysitting at 12, not 16, but, well it's the thought that counts...) Four more years and I will be old enough to have been their mother provided I keep teaching this age group.
And the middle ages were a dark dark time. Isn't this one of your brighter ones? My Dad is 56. (I imagine you are much younger by the way...) He can see all that he has accomplished, enjoy his children with out having to raise them anymore and he still has a lot of life left and a very strong and capable body. What's dark about that?
Thanks, Sandy, and bless you for assuming that I am younger than your dad. In fact, I am. By your own standards, when I was born he would have been old enough (just) to babysit me.
I have written several musings on becoming middle aged, and to lump them together i put them all under the sub heading of Life in the middle ages (middle-aged), it's just a naming convention I started, but you're the first one to pick up on it.
examples:
http://talesfromthewayside.blogspot.com/2006/06/midlife-no-just-mid-week.html
http://talesfromthewayside.blogspot.com/2005/11/nap-and-old-gray-hair.html
http://talesfromthewayside.blogspot.com/2005/09/life-in-middle-ages.html
I always thought you and Chelsea were in your mid to late thirties!
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