Birthdays always bring out the weird in me
Kids who think that what they’re into now is hip will be amazed at how quickly fashion fades.
They, too, will look back in horror at the way they look and dress now.
This is the unshakable truth.
No one is exempt from the Rule of Cool.
Well, no one except James Dean, maybe, but even he, in “East of Eden,” comes across as dated, traditional, fighting with his beast of a father, looking for his tart of a mother, trying to hold his family together until he decides to nuke it all.
We are all doomed to be less than cool: Each and every one of us will fade into the background.
I was thinking about devising a strategy to defeat the inevitable and all I could come up with was cosmetic cover-ups, you know, coloring your hair or getting a facelift; transparent efforts and kind of pathetic.
There’s a reason that getting old has always sucked and that’s because, essentially, we’re powerless to prevent it.
When I was a teenager, there was a spirit in the air that insisted, Never Trust Anyone Over 30.
What that meant, I’ve never been sure, since I didn’t trust anybody, ever, regardless of their age. What was that line in “Risky Business?” Something like, “If I had my way, trust would be a four-letter word.”
Sign me up for that.
I’ve lent friends thousands of dollars, only to have them disappear without paying me back.
Trust.
Yeah.
What was that Rod Stewart line?
“The women I’ve known I wouldn’t let tie my shoes?”
Something like that.
Trust .... yeah, right.
And the music and the movies that I grew up with, the non-optional cultural artifacts ... Guess what?
They’re outdated and forgotten.
No longer cool.
I was up on the roof the other afternoon, feeling young and spry. My goal was to clean out the gutters all the way around the house, really doing a good job, making them sparkle and shine.
The fact that I was dealing with a bum left ankle -- a consequence of a marathon session in the garage, trying to put away Christmas decorations before Valentine’s Day, stumbling around under all that weight -- didn’t concern me. I was dedicated to the task. I meant to complete it.
“Hey, Mike,” my across-the-street neighbor yelled up at me. “You’re too old for stuff like that.”
He could have been right, but I reject that. “Maybe,” I said, “but it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
And I danced on, way up there.
Weird, though, the way your mind works.
You think you’re still 16 years old when, in fact, you’ll be a full 40 years down that road in a matter of days. I’ve always enjoyed hanging out the roof of whatever place I’m living and I can still hear my mother’s voice as I gamboled about the upper reaches of my childhood home.
“Wretched Flea,” she’d say, using her pet name for her firstborn, “you’re going to fall off and no one’s going to feel sorry for you.”
(You should Google “Wretched Flea” at this point. You might be surprised to find that it’s almost a term of endearment. Almost.)
Mom never much liked heights.
Or depths.
I can still remember her in the bowels of Seneca Caverns, swearing to Almighty God that if she ever got out of there alive, she’d never, ever, drop 600 feet below the ground again.
And she never did.
I think that was a mistake, but what do I know?
I think flying is the coolest way to get around and, at 35,000 feet, I’m always smiling.
Mom wouldn’t even join us when we went to the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
And she stayed on the ground when the rest of us experienced the apex of the Washington Monument.
But we all have our phobias.
You might be afraid of aging.
Not me.
I couldn’t care less if someone looks at my long, stringy gray hair and thinks, “Hmm ... old guy,” because I know my brain is in better shape, sharper and more acutely trained than whomever’s judging me on the way that I look.
“Yeah?” I’d say to that person. “You’re so smart ... name the vice-presidents in reverse order!”
This is something I can do in less than 90 seconds.
A trained trick, to be sure, but do you know anyone else who can do it?
I can.
It’s not cool.
My wife and I were looking at a videotape of our 1999 vacation trip to the Outer Banks, the year before we made Coastal Carolina our home.
Guess what?
Each and every article of clothing I’m wearing in that footage is still in my closet. I wear clothes that are way older than those, too.
Not cool.
Again, long silver hair and faded jeans and ratty T-shirts aside, I don’t care about being cool.
But many do.
Let’s bring out Neil Young to set the tone for the “Time Fades Away” finale.
(Hint: Those of you own the record, now’s the time to put it on ... for the rest of you, just understand that you’ll have your own musical touchstones and they will make as much sense to me as mine do for you.)
As I hit and break on through the barrier to late middle age, I’m gratified not only that I’m still standing, but that my work continues to matter to those of you who still find something of value in this space.
I thank you.
I appreciate your loyalty.
I think you’re all cool.
Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.
Published: February 23, 2011
