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JOE SWEET REMEMBERED
THIS MIDLIFE CRISIS IS DEDICATED to all of you who sent cards and e-mails congratulating me on my 40th birthday, just two short weeks ago. I was amazed to learn that so many of you keep records on these dubious milestones ... and I hope that all of you enjoyed your little jokes about wrinkles, loss of hair and erectile dysfunction. Thanks for remembering me; you can count on me to remember you someday, too.
Well, there I was--just me and the Big Four-Oh. And what did I do? I bought no Ferraris. No Irish tweed caps to cover my bald head. No gangly undergraduate girls, no expensive toys to proclaim some personal return to youth.
Instead, I bought a copy of The Prisoner of Zenda.
The day after my birthday, I was suddenly possessed by a desire to read it. And it took me a while to figure out why.
The plot of this 1894 swashbuckler has been copied many times: An Englishman with an uncanny resemblance to a German monarch is pressed into action as an impostor when the real king is kidnapped before his coronation. Suffice to say he turns out to be a splendid king. He foils the plot and restores the rightful ruler to his throne, though it means leaving a princess he has come to love, and returning home.
This book has many favorite parts for me, but it was the final chapter that I immediately turned to--not the swordfights, not the love scenes, but rather the melancholy ending. Here is the epilogue, after our hero has recounted his tale:
"I have lived a very quiet life at a small house which I have taken in the country. The ordinary ambitions and aims of men in my position seem to me dull and unattractive .... my neighbors think me a dreamy, indolent fellow. Yet I am a young man; and sometimes I have a fancy -- the superstitious would call it a presentiment -- that my part in life is not yet altogether played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs, I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my enemies', brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows."
A telling clue about my own thoughts of late. I, too, hope that my adventuring days aren't over. New York and Amsterdam were my Castle of Zenda, a long time ago. Maybe some new adventure will come along, when I'm ready to reach for it.
Whatever that new adventure is, I hope it doesn't come too close to Zenda's sequel. In the story, the hero does indeed go back to his past glories in Ruritania--and ends up getting killed while covering himself in glory. Screw that!. :)
I AM ... CAMBODIA!
I filled out a gag survey about myself, thinking I'd be some prosperous but stodgy Benelux country, and here's what I got as a verdict:
.
Life's been really rough, but it's slowly improving. You know way too much about the skeletal structure of humans, mostly from being forced to study it. This has given you a fear of many things, most especially the color red.The future has to be more promising though, and your greatest adversary can now never come back to hurt you any more.
You can find out what nation-state you most resemble, by taking The Country Quiz by Blue Pyramid Interactive
