"I WAS SO MUCH OLDER THEN,
I'M YOUNGER THAN THAT NOW"


A quick glance at the calendar as I sit here hunkered over my keyboard reminds me that next Monday, June 1, I will - in spite of all my best efforts to avoid it - observe the 46th anniversary of my birth.

Whoopie.

You'll note for the record that I hesitate to say that I will be "celebrating" my birthday. I can't say why. A friend of mine once suggested that it is because there comes a time in everyone's life when celebrating a birthday seems a trifle immature, but personally I don't think that's it.

For one thing, it occurs to me that actively refusing to celebrate a birthday in itself seems just a tad childish...

For another thing, there's a difference between being childish and being childlike. I don't mind admitting that I try to maintain some degree of "childlike-ness" in my life. It must be working, because after all these years of raising two offspring of our own, my wife insists that I'm still the biggest kid she knows. And a quick glance at my desks both here at the office and at home - with their assorted toy cars, miniature figures, comic books and other assorted childhood geegaws - seems ample evidence that she may be right.

That being the case, I rather suspect my dislike for birthdays - a rather recent acquirement in my life - has more to do with the fact that I just don't like the idea of getting older. That's a common malady amongst us simple humans, and we all have our own little ways of trying to deal with it. Some people color their hair or get a facelift; these days some folks have their doctors inject them with a faceful of botulism.

Others leave their their jobs, homes and/or families and generally run amok, attributing such behavior to a feeling of "mid-life crisis." More often than not such feelings are self-inflicted, and the whole notion of having a mid-life crisis has - in my humble opinion - become little more than an ill-advised effort to make childishness in adults seem just a bit more socially acceptable.

And then there are a few (like myself) who get up every morning, put forth an honest effort to make an honest living and pay their bills and raise their children and otherwise behave like reasonably responsible adults - and then every now and then feel the need to unwind just a little by breaking out the old box of Lego blocks or Hot Wheels cars and just PLAY. You know, the way we used to way back in simpler times, when we were still just wee little nippers wondering what the world looked like from way up there at our fathers' vantage point.

This usually results in expressions ranging from bewilderment to amusement and from time to time even outrage on the faces of those who simply do not understand such behavior. Believe me, I know; I still recall the look on the cashier's face that time years ago when the wife and I were checking out of a toy store with a shopping cart full of Lego sets. Neither of our sons had yet arrived in the world at the time, nor would they for several years yet, but the poor lady at the cash register had no way of knowing that.

"I see someone's little boy is going to be having a good time tonight," she said.

"Oh, no," I told her matter-of-factly. "These are mine." From the look on her face, I might as well have told her that I was a visitor from the planet Qwasertyffph and asked her to take me to her leader...

Of course, a person's willingness to exhibit such behavior outside the relative security of his or her own home is proportional to how much immunity one has built up from such reactions over the years. As I have mentioned here in the past, I long since quit caring about the looks I get from people who learn that I still enjoy playing with Legos from time to time. My best friend from college is one of the great water gun marksmen of all time, and has been known to lay in wait for hours for hapless victims at the annual family reunions.

But I also know married fathers younger than myself who simply can't bring themselves to indulge in that particular brand of carefree adolescent jocularity. "What will the neighbors think?" they ask.

"Who cares?" I respond, usually to no avail. I'll typically point out that such behavior also tends to strengthen one's relationship with the children - it has in my case, at any rate - and that as stress relievers go it sure beats going home every night and kicking the wife or biting the dog.

Or, for that matter, leaving one's job, home and/or family and generally running amok in that stereotypically pathetic mid-life crisis sort of way.

More often than not such efforts fall on deaf ears, and I can't help feeling bad for those people.

As for me, maybe my hair is getting grayer by the minute, and maybe I don't get around quite as easily as I used to. But I still feel young at heart, and surely that counts for something.

(Copyright 2009, by John A. Small)