Strange old creatures us men, but then again it’s not entirely our own fault, the man upstairs has a weird old twisted sense of humor, men hitting their sexual peak in their late teens and women hitting it in their early thirties, what’s that all about? Never the twain shall meet, we are like fire hydrants spewing out bodily fluids at eighteen while girls of the same age just want to shop and tweet; then in their early thirties when the female of the species are like fire hydrants most of us men are suffering from erectile dementia and the lady’s start looking towards young studs or barely alive older guys pumped with Viagra to satisfy their needs. Eighteen year old boys and fifty year old men who would hump a hole in the wall if they thought they could getting all the action, yep, he had a funny old sense of humor all right. Which leads me to this month’s gripe, or gripes, mid-life, crisis and all it entails, stop snickering this is serious stuff etc. etc.
Yes, middle life, mid-life, no matter which way you phrase it has that stench of something half-finished not half-begun. You are officially over the hump, you can see the finish line and it scares the bejesus out of us. Us poor dudes when we reach a certain age and everything starts to creak and groan, when we start to loose hair where we don’t want to lose it and start to grow it where we don’t want it to grow, depressing stuff.
A friend of mine came to visit recently, mid-forties, a little too much free time and a lot of disposable income, lucky sod. He wanted me to join him on an adventure holiday. Why I asked? Don’t know, he mumbled, just because. Mumbling twit, I knew the signs, a crisis was looming, and dare I say it? A half-life crisis, I will refuse to call it a mid-life crisis that sounds too nice, it’s a half-over crisis or a half-life crisis and that’s the end of it, literally. Its terminal my friend, no remission here, bend over and lets check your temperature. He had a fist full of glossy brochures with him and a stupid leering grin on his face, I felt it was my duty as a friend to show him the folly of his ways. Couldn’t exactly come right out and say, Mister Stiffy gone Limpy? So I kept my mouth shut (and anyone who knows me will tell you that that takes a lot of effort for me) and listened.
First on his bucket list was a balloon safari across the plains of Africa. What the hell I said, you want to float across the African Savannah in a wicker basket attached to a leaky balloon propelled by a highly inflammable gaseous substance and all the beasts of that Dark Continent looking up at you, licking their lips and saying, hey look a floating food hamper. Job done, saw the realization dawn and we tossed that idea. How about hand gliding? Strapped to a kite, gliding off the side of a mountain trying to dodge electricity pylons and trying to land in one piece as opposed to many smaller pieces? Any sport I reminded him where you have to strap yourself into a body bag before take-off doesn’t bode well for a favourable outcome. Another one scratched, but he was still there grinning like a fool and gripping his bunch of brochures like they were some holy relic that held the answers to that question of life and how to lead it. I was close to throttling him at this stage. God damn it wake up you smuck, it’s a crisis, but don’t worry, modern medicine is a wonderful thing. Bungee jumping? That was it, a push too far. You want to jump off the side of a bridge and bounce around in mid-air like a yo-yo, be my guest, no grey areas in that sport, it either works or……..Look mate it’s just a little hiccup, make an appointment to go see your shrink. He went ballistic, threw the brochures at me and called me a chicken shit bitch. Fair enough. He stormed out. We had being friends for a long time, I knew he just needed some time.
A week later I saw him drive past in a new sports car with a 20 year old blond strapped to the hood. Dip-shit. A week after that and I started to feel a little green around the gills, was I coming down with something? Damn. An hour after that and I was rummaging through the rubbish trying to find those brochures. Funny old thing life, never dull for sure.
Half Life