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11.19.01
I've been 36 for a week and a day now, and haven't self-destructed. So far, it's not as bad as I expected. Except for about three minutes last week when my friend Jon pointed out that I've now reached the magic age where people half my age are legal (ONLY IN SOME STATES ARE THEY LEGAL, I'd like to point out, Jon).
I became resigned to coloring the gray hair several years ago, having inherited, according to an older and adamant neighbor, a "wild Irish gene that makes you go gray early. It comes in tandem with a gene that causes arthritis. Have you had the arthritis yet, dear?"
No, not yet, but thanks for the heads-up. (Where do people come up with these things?) I'm sometimes what my mom would call "creaky," but I don't think it's arthritis. Although who knows. We are Irish. Maybe it is.
I've been doing close inspections in the mirror every morning for crow's feet and other facial anomolies. As the saying goes, growing old is better than the alternative, but I can't help but feel that I wouldn't mind having a 19-year-old head sitting on top of my 36-year-old body. I would want my 36-year-old brain inside my 19-year-old head, but I would want my 19-year-old face. I don't mean plastic surgery, I mean my actual 19-year-old face.
Isn't it weird how you're the same person you always were, even as you age? I can remember hanging upside-down off my bed when I was ten, to see what my room would look like upside-down and backwards. And I can remember thinking about living in the upside-down and backwards room, and I was not a different person thinking those things. I was still exactly me. And I'm still exactly me now, which leads me to believe that when (God willing) I'm 80, I'll still be exactly me.
What's holding me together?
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