HITTING THE SPEED LIMIT

Turned 55 the other day. Who knew I'd live this long? Go figure. And no, 55 is not the new 30, ladies and gents. It's the same old 55, especially when you live the way that I have. I look every second of my age, thank you very much, and earned every line in my face. Regrets? Hell yeah, who doesn't? And what kind of lukewarm life do you have to lead not to have any regrets? Some of them were a lot of fun until it all blew up in my face. There's not a damned thing you can do about that crap now so I don't dwell on the past. Unless of course that involves sweet memories, and I've got plenty of those. Quite a lot of memories pile up in the old memory banks by this age and sometimes they're hard to sort out, but I manage.

55 is kind of an oddball age, not the big milestone that 21, 30, 40 and 50 are, which is basically a bunch of nonsense anyway. My milestone birthdays came and went and I don't remember any huge revelation or change in my life. Maybe I had a nice party for a few of them, people in my life that I love made a fuss and I got to feel special, yeah, that's always nice. But of course you wake up the next day, life goes on and the only thing that's changed about you is the number you fill in on any form you fill out requesting your age. For the younger milestone birthdays that was somewhat of a disappointment, but what the hell, I was young and didn't know any better. It takes a while to learn that life is a process, not an event.

But learn I did, lots of times the hard way, that's just how it goes sometimes. Getting older is pretty cool in a lot of ways. You actually do gain a measure of wisdom and a sense of perspective with the piling up of the years. You almost can't help it with all the experience you gain just by living your life, whatever kind of life that may be. Sure, you learn a lot of hard lessons and find out things you wish you didn't, but mostly it's a joy to know a lot of things about life and people and the world in general. You're still capable of bonehead mistakes, which is actually refreshing when you think about it. Life would really suck if you had all the answers. There'd be no challenges and no fun if things didn't blow up in your face every now and then.

The older you get the easier it is to handle disappointment, and it's also easier to see why things went wrong, as long as you're willing to admit that just maybe the problem was you. Maybe it wasn't, but that's always the best place to start when one our beloved little schemes we make for out lives go kablooey. That's something else you learn, things about yourself, maybe some of them not so pleasant. You get more honest with yourself as far as recognizing your own strengths and admitting your shortcomings. Some things you don't like about yourself you can change, others you simply cannot. Knowing the difference is the beginning of wisdom.

When it comes to life, there is damned little you can control outside of yourself, and even that's no walk in the park at times. That's not a piece of knowledge that comes with age for a lot of people, they just never get it. That would be the type of people I pity the most in this world; control freaks. That must be one hell of a frustrating affliction is all I can say. By definition a control freak can never be satisfied. I mean, it does rain sometimes, and that's only one small thing we can't control. Try controlling other people and life itself sometime and let me know how you make out. Odds are, not so good. If you're a control freak, though, you never stop trying if you live to be a hundred in spite of a lifetime of evidence and hard experience that tells you it's a fool's game.

I'm not criticizing these unfortunates since I understand compulsion all too well, just commiserating. I've spent my fair share of time banging my head on a different kind of brick wall with pretty much the same results. My compulsions have not left me, I just don't act on them anymore. My liver and kidneys send me thank-you notes all the time for not trying to preserve them in alcohol anymore. Everybody's got some kind of hurdle to jump before they reach the finish line. Never met any exceptions from any walk of life.

So what is 55? It's not old, it's not young by any means, so people call it middle age. I sure hope so, since that means I'm going to live to 110. That would be a shock. It's shocking enough to be 55. I guess it's the age when you start thinking about this kind of crap. I never was one for much reflection, but a 10-year old kid asked me the other day how it feels to be 55, which to him, I suppose, is ancient. I felt the same way when I was 10, and there's only one difference as far as I can see: I know exactly what it's like to be 10 years old and he can't imagine what it feels like to be 55.

To be sure there are many other differences, but an average 10 year old is pretty much equipped with all the life lessons he'll ever need to get along in this world and that's the stuff his mother taught him. What happens for the rest of your life after that is basically field-testing Mom's wisdom and it always turns out she was right. When you follow her simple rules of conduct things go smooth. When you don't, things get rough. Sometimes life is just that simple. There are, however, always the rainy days and other calamities of greater magnitude that we will all encounter sooner or later in life, but if you pull out your mental handbook of Mom's lessons you'll recall that she warned about these things too and told you to do the best you can and be the best person you can be under the circumstances. She had it pretty much covered.

That's pretty remarkable when you think of the twenty-something year old girl that was pretty much everybody's Mom. Their fierce love and gentle, homely life lessons have shaped everybody in the world forever and their record is a pretty good one considering the fact that almost everybody you meet everywhere is a very decent person doing their best in a hard world. Which upon reflection led me to have a lot of respect for women, who know a lot more at a lot younger age about life than men. That's the facts, Jack. You don't have to like it, men, but that's reality. Is there anyone out there who thinks the world would be a better place if it was us guys giving the life lessons to the kiddies instead?

Bad enough the crazy notions we men fill kids' heads with at every opportunity, all that macho violent bullshit and labeling the slaughter of other human beings as an exercise in honor and glory. What a load of shit! With us as their Moms the world would be full of raving lunatics at each others' throats. Or at least more so than it is now. Probably the only reason we haven't all slain each other to the point of extinction is the restraining hand of women. The real honor and glory is in living your life as the best person you can be, enduring whatever hardships are visited upon you and harming no one else in the process. There are many more measures of success that battlefield victories.

If more of us had listened to Mom there'd have been a whole lot less carnage in our history. And perhaps if women and not men had written the Bible, the Koran and other religious textbooks there'd be a lot less of that whole "slay them down to the last man, woman and child" mentality when it comes to dealing with people who are different from us and who believe different things and a lot more "live and let live" for the kiddies to learn about in religion classes. I look at men as more Old Testament guys, eye for an eye and tooth for a toothers, while women are more New Testament love thy neighbor types. Sort of a simplistic view, but that's my business, and I really don't think the New and Old Testaments can be possibly talking about the same God and that's a whole other story altogether.

Besides, what do you think is better advice, "share with others" from Mom or "don't take any crap from anybody" from Pop? As you get older you realize that you have to put up with a lot of crap in this world and to learn which of it to let slide and which of it to never let slide. You go around ranting and raving and fighting at every mouthful of bullshit you hear you won't have time to do much else but scream and fight, and that's no kind of life at all. There's too much joy in this world to waste time on fighting what you don't need to fight. There's plenty enough battles to be fought without seeking more. There's none of this that I told that 10 year old boy.

I told him that being 55 is like being 10, only more so. That didn't clear things up for the kid but I figure why clog his brain with stuff he can't understand anyway. Let him be a kid because that magic time is for being a child and all that entails. He'll take his own journey, learn his own lessons and draw his own conclusions. My only advice to him was to listen to his Mom, enjoy every day because they're all different and try to learn something new whenever you can. Have some fun and get to know some people because they're all pretty different too, and almost every one of them is fascinating and good to be with. Those that are not, just pass them by. No sense wasting chunks of your life you'll never get back trying to change unpleasant or evil people, that's just not going to happen. Go towards the light. That's where the action is and all the fun. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me...