There's no avoiding it (well, not in a good way at any rate), a date with Destiny awaits which, considering she was a puppet on the TV show "Captain Scarlet", and that my Beloved would probably kill me with spoons if I went along and said "Hi", maybe that isn't the greatest of things to have to look forward to.
Although…
(See… I'm still just a big kid… so how on Earth can such an utter child be nearly half a century old…?)
(See… I'm still just a big kid… so how on Earth can such an utter child be nearly half a century old…?)
To be honest, though, those sorts of "significant" numbers have never really bothered me all that much… Well, at least not until I started thinking about it this morning at any rate. After all, I've spent so long acting like an "old git" that it comes as little surprise to find that I have actually finally become one… In fact I'm certain that enough people reading these words (or who have actually met me…) would be more surprised to find that I haven't yet passed this particular milestone, and am not looking at it in the rear-view mirror with another couple of decades on the clock.
With a trilby perched upon my head, no doubt, and the speedometer showing a steady nineteen miles per hour...
With a trilby perched upon my head, no doubt, and the speedometer showing a steady nineteen miles per hour...
People… other "people" that is… seem to have some sort of crisis whenever they jump a decade, whether they're hitting thirty, or forty, or whatever, as if, by being suddenly one entire day older, they are somehow completely knackered by circumstance. It's as if the sudden reminder that we are all ultimately doomed is something that they'd forgotten about for ten years. Equally, even on the more ordinary years, "people" seem to feel the need to commemorate the landing of each nail in the coffin on the same day each year which does strike me as being downright peculiar, although it does seem to keep the card shops busy at least...
Still you have to laugh…
Don't you…?
Well, if you look at the allegedly "humorous" cards designed for those "decade-related" birthdays (You know the ones… Full-on abuse thinly disguised as a cheery greeting…) apparently you're supposed to find it all terribly amusing to be tapped upon the shoulder and given a timely reminder by the Grim Reaper as he taps his wristwatch meaningfully, signals a cheery thumb-bones up, and heads off on some other, more pressing, engagement. "Put a brave face on it", "Wear a smile", "Share the joke", and prove that you still have a sense of humour (whatever that is…), whilst inside you may very well be feeling as if you're being torn apart.
We're nothing if not a tactful species…
Then "people" do their best to try and persuade you that you need to celebrate the whole wretched business of ageing by having some kind of public humiliation ritual, otherwise known as the ghastly social encounter that "people" have come to know as the "party".
I don't.
I shan't…
You can, so that I don't have to...
Meanwhile, perhaps it's just that it's such a huge stepping stone on the journey towards the brass and pine that it's a massive shock to the system to realise that another entire decade has managed to evaporate without managing to achieve all that much (well, if you're me, that is…), or perhaps sometimes some of us are just so surprised to have got here at all, that the shock to the system causes some kind of a meltdown.
Whichever, perhaps there's little reason to celebrate it. Perhaps if you try and ignore it, it'll just slink away without drawing attention to itself. I spent three years being twenty-two simply because I forgot that I'd had two birthdays at that point, and that's the way that I like to deal with it.
My usual method for dealing with things by not dealing with them… A technique carefully honed across nearly half a century of practice...
Still you have to laugh…
Don't you…?
Well, if you look at the allegedly "humorous" cards designed for those "decade-related" birthdays (You know the ones… Full-on abuse thinly disguised as a cheery greeting…) apparently you're supposed to find it all terribly amusing to be tapped upon the shoulder and given a timely reminder by the Grim Reaper as he taps his wristwatch meaningfully, signals a cheery thumb-bones up, and heads off on some other, more pressing, engagement. "Put a brave face on it", "Wear a smile", "Share the joke", and prove that you still have a sense of humour (whatever that is…), whilst inside you may very well be feeling as if you're being torn apart.
We're nothing if not a tactful species…
Then "people" do their best to try and persuade you that you need to celebrate the whole wretched business of ageing by having some kind of public humiliation ritual, otherwise known as the ghastly social encounter that "people" have come to know as the "party".
I don't.
I shan't…
You can, so that I don't have to...
Meanwhile, perhaps it's just that it's such a huge stepping stone on the journey towards the brass and pine that it's a massive shock to the system to realise that another entire decade has managed to evaporate without managing to achieve all that much (well, if you're me, that is…), or perhaps sometimes some of us are just so surprised to have got here at all, that the shock to the system causes some kind of a meltdown.
Whichever, perhaps there's little reason to celebrate it. Perhaps if you try and ignore it, it'll just slink away without drawing attention to itself. I spent three years being twenty-two simply because I forgot that I'd had two birthdays at that point, and that's the way that I like to deal with it.
My usual method for dealing with things by not dealing with them… A technique carefully honed across nearly half a century of practice...
I suppose that there is something to be noted about switching from one of the age brackets on an official form to the next one… (are you aged between 35-44, 45-54, etc…) but the age itself remains fairly insignificant as far as it goes, despite what I may have suggested here today.
Sadly, I've known enough people who didn't manage to make it even this far, and, to be honest, there's nothing that awful about it when you consider the alternative option.
Well, that cheered me up.
ReplyDeleteThere is something kind of desperate about the 'humorous' cards.
ReplyDelete