With age comes other stuff

I knew many things would change as I got older. I do not gasp in shock when I reach the top of a long flight of stairs and find that my knees creak a bit and there is discomfort. It is expected that a person whose dedication to physical well-being is easily over-powered and bludgeoned into submission by his desire for a comfortable chair and a half a dozen cookies. I do, however, gasp when I reach the top of a long flight of stairs because there suddenly seems to be severe lack of oxygen in my lungs.

There are times I am surprised when I look in the mirror. The surprise is not the amount of gray hair on my head. It is the split second of thinking I am looking at my father in the mirror that causes the short-lived sense of astonishment. It does not bother me in the slightest that I look my dad. Truthfully, it is much better to look like my dad when he was pushing fifty than to look like Christopher when he was fifteen, really bad hair (even though none of it was gray), a gawkiness which would make a baby giraffe taking his first steps look like Nureyev dancing in a brand new pair of Keds, and the single persistent zit, approximately the size of the Hope diamond, which established permanent residence on the left side of my nose. It is definitely preferable to look portly and distinguished rather than skinny and geekier than the entire Stephen Hawking fan club.

One thing I particularly like about the middle aged me as opposed to the younger me is the calm demeanor. It would shock most people who know me that a nickname my mother had for me at one stage of my life was Tigger, because I was so rambunctious. Nowadays the word rambunctious is about as likely to be used to describe me as the word contemplative is to be used in reference to Terrell Owens.

I prefer the even keeled life. It bothers my family sometimes. When something really cool happens they get put out I do not skip about the room belting out Irving Berlin tunes and hugging the cat. What they fail to realize is this lifestyle also means when the power bill comes and it is astronomically high because the children still refuse to turn off lights or televisions or computers I do not operatically bust out in Wagner’s Ride of Valkryies as I napalm their bedrooms.

One aspect of being a boring old guy which I am just now getting used to is having a little bit of money at the end of the month instead of the other way around. From the time I was a freshman at the University of Kansas to about eight months ago I, and later my wife and I, and still later my wife and three children and I, lived like freshmen in college. Ramen Noodles, macaroni and cheese, store brand peanut butter (which may not have salmonella but really kind of tastes like it does) and never buying so-called luxury items from a store which does not also sell milk, fertilizer, shoes made from petroleum by-products and gerbil food.

My wife has worked very hard to properly handle our finances so we are out of credit card debt and very soon we will pay off the last of our car debt. Before heretofore unknown relatives start calling for loans, I need to make it perfectly clear we do not have wealth to manage. (Have you noticed most all of the commercials for those firms which promise to help you with volumes of money have been replaced by commercials showing nervous people choosing between a serious and circumspect financial advisor and placing their life savings in a mayonnaise jar and burying it in the backyard which is home to a family of angry Dobermans.) We are simply in a position where it’s possible to imagine our kids going to college without having to sell various vital organs on eBay.

Another benefit to having an income without debt is we can patronize locations which genuinely benefit the people of our area. When you are living paycheck to paycheck you do not have the luxury of choice when it comes to stores to go to. You have to go to the cheapest place in town. I have a friend who calls that single choice “the store which must not be named” so my family now calls it Voldemart.