Well, now I’m old.

I’ve now crossed over that mystic divide between youth and age. Well, yeah, bullshit, I’m only 50; that’s still young, it’s the new 40! But it certainly is an age I never really contemplated. I was thinking about that the other night, and realized that I was always fixated on the fact that when the year 2000 came along, I’d be 40. Never really thought much about what came next.
In a few weeks, I’ll have been at my job for 15 years. Never thought I’d make it that long in a job where I wasn’t working for my dad. Hell, I never thought Dad would have been gone for over 7 years when I turned 50, either.
And as a kid, I never thought I’d be such a damn conservative about things, although my wife and my mother both certify that I was “born old”. (On the other hand, I was the one who put the “Reagan ’76” bumper sticker on Dad’s truck….34 years ago.)
There are things I wish I’d done differently. Gone on to get my Ph.D. in American history and tried to get a job teaching mush-brains the truth about American exceptionalism and our proud economic, political, and military history. Or actually paid attention in my math classes and gone to That Other University and worked on a mechanical engineering degree. Or actually joined the Navy when I was 20 instead of wussing out — and then being so damn pissed when 9/11 happened and at 41 they didn’t want me. I don’t regret giving up dreams of becoming a rabbi — the Reform movement that I belonged to at the time has become rotten at the core, and I left it several years before I married Sally and joined the Conservative congregation.
I also wish I hadn’t messed around so long trying to get a certain blonde to marry me. Turns out the blonde I got was probably better for me in the long term. We just didn’t meet until it was really too late to be thinking about kids — which, if I’d married at 30 instead of 40, would have definitely been on the table.
But in all fairness, it’s been a pretty good life. Great family, great friends, never really wanted for anything, even when Dad’s business went bankrupt and we were kind of short. Can’t complain. And nobody would listen if I did 🙂
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Stay safe. Enjoy the turkey.