midlife crisis du jour

If you’ve been hanging with this blog a while, you may remember my 50th birthday. Ah, ‘twas a grand weekend. My nearest and dearest gathered to pay joyous tribute to my 50-ness. I wore a tiara, ate chicken fried steak. By the end of the weekend I’d concluded that if that was 50, then I was just fine. Life was good.

OK, so now I’m looking down the barrel of 51 and you know what that means, don’t you? I’m almost 60.

Life is still good but I really hate the birthdays after milestone birthdays. The anticipation (fear, loathing, horror) of the big birthdays is so great that when I get through them without the world crashing around my ears, I feel I should be allowed to simply stop aging—at least for a few years. OK, I survived 50. Now let’s take a breather. We can resume the aging process in a year or two. Or not. I’d be OK if we stopped here.

This is the first year I’ve noticed stuff hurting. The first thing to go is the feet. I enjoy looking at the blog about stylish seniors, Advanced Style (although I think they often set the bar a little low). But I’ve noted that no matter how stylish (or not) these advanced stylistas are, they all are wearing comfortable shoes.

It seems a little rude that my feet should hurt since I’ve never been one for cruel shoes. I didn’t wear heels at all for many years and I haven’t tottered around on anything higher than about three inches since I was a teenager. Am I paying a penalty for my five-inch disco heels now, all these years later?

A friend told me that lose fat on the bottom of our feet as we age, which is why they hurt. Somehow the fat defies gravity and moves up, I guess, to our bellies. But if this is the case and our feet do lose a comfy layer of fat, how about all those people who are perfecting ways to inject fat into our lips start concentrating on fattening up our feet instead? Much more practical.

Not that I would wear them out of the house or anything, but I’m wearing Crocs as I write this. They’re comfortable. And a sure sign that I’m pushing 70.

are we cute when we age?

A friend an I are having a debate about using the words “cute” and “adorable” to describe older people.

I said that calling old people “cute” often is patronizing because it’s diminutive and, to my ears, infantilizing. My friend disagreed and considers it just another compliment.

For example, this couple in one of our new favorite blogs, Advanced Style.

This is a great-looking couple—classy and elegant, and the guy’s response to receiving a compliment was smart. But adorable? I don’t see adorable and I don’t think, if these two were, say, in their 40s, the word adorable would be applied. I think we often use cute and adorable for older people who continue to assert personality rather than just slinking quietly off into their dotage. (Unless we call them cranky or curmudgeonly, the alternate personality assertion.) Which is not to say it's impossible to be a cute older person. But to me, cute older people are those who were cute when they were younger, too. They're just cute people.

It seems to me that we go from “cute” and “adorable” childhood, through adulthood when we are not considered cute unless we are 5’ tall and snub-nosed (and I’ve been told by a friend who is under 5’ that she gets very tired of being called cute), then cycle back to “cute” and “adorable” in old age.

I certainly don’t suggest the words are used as intentional slurs—not in this blog or anywhere. I think we often use "cute" as shorthand--it's easier than thinking up more specific words. Once, a friend and I went shopping in the little gifty shops in a small Texas town and tried not to use the word "cute." It was just about impossible.

But in this context, the words just sound patronizing to me, however unintentionally. You rarely see them used in The Sartorialist, the influential blog which inspired Advanced Style.

My friend and I have agreed to disagree but now I’m curious at to what others think. Am I just a cranky old curmudgeon? (Well, yes. I'm spry, too. But what do you think anyway?)

random

I’ve been beating the age horse to death but today's Dallas Morning News has an essay about the “Longevity Revolution” so one last little burst of griping. Ageism factors into Moos’ discussion. Always nice to know I’m on-trend in my kvetches. Click on the little graphic about life expectancy throughout the ages. In ancient Greece, life expectancy was 22 years. Man, they sure managed to accomplish a lot of art in a short time.

Anyhow, Moos writes: Six in 10 boomers in their 50s have told pollsters that they would like to switch careers someday and find jobs with a higher, social purpose. Many have set their sights on education, health care, the ministry and social services.

I was trying to switch careers to social work when I went back to school in 1999. Too bad I set my sights on a field that requires a post-graduate education because after I finished my BA, I realized I didn’t have the dough for grad school and when it comes to scholarship money at my age and station, pickings are very slim.

The last scholarship I applied for, the Jack Kent Cooke, required me to disclose not only all my assets, including retirement savings, but also to submit financial data from my parents. Nuts, right? I don’t know what to think about having to hit up dad for his data but the idea is, according to my adviser at UTD, my alma mater, which had to nominate me, if you’re not willing to drain your assets in pursuit of education, you don’t want it enough. Yeah, that’s fine when you’re 22. When you’re 50, it would only prove that you’re too stupid to educate.

In the end, after I’d filled out an extensive application—including six essays and all this financial data (and no, my father was not thrilled about supplying it), my adviser decided not to nominate me. I don’t know why, he didn’t say in his bland one paragraph notification though he hinted it was money. As in, I wasn't poor enough. But it was a blow. There just aren’t many opportunities out there for the likes of me. The JKC Foundation mission is “lifelong learning.” Yeah, my ass.

I might have had enough of chasing this particular dream. Remember when I posted this article about closing doors? It might be time for me to close this door and get on with my writing career, such as it is. I just don’t know how it’s going to support me into old age. AARP has scholarships for women and was overwhelmed with applications in 2007. Maybe I’ll try that next year. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Speaking of age...

Arbella Perkins Ewings, world’s third-oldest woman, whom I quoted a week or so ago, passed away nine days after her 114th birthday. Way to hang on for the ink, Ms. Ewings. And R.I.P.

Unrelated crime report: Somebody is setting cars afire in the Cliff. Yikes.

a question

So, in another newspaper story today about an unsolved murder, a couple is described as "Danny's aging parents."

It seems to me that we are all aging all the time, yes? Even people in their 30s?

wisdom

Quoting Bell Ewing, the third oldest person in the world (who lives in Dallas and will turn 114 on Thursday):

"She told me once that the secret to a long life is she spends six months minding her own business and six months leaving other people alone." said Ruby Perkins Williams, 55, a great-niece.