Mid-Life Crisis? More Like the Tip of the Iceberg.
Posted: Sunday, May 03, 2009
by John Weber
http://screambucket.com/
"I've been having this recurring dream," I tell my wife.
I'm driving down the highway with Michael Moore in his brown 90's Ford. My driving dreams used to be fun, flashy summertime dreams, Born to be Wild blaring on the radio, incredibly fast but in total control. I used to have them all the time when I was a teenager, less often in my twenties, and strangely, almost never since the odometer hit 40. But this dream isn't like those dreams; this one's different.
First, Michael's driving; taking the slow, scenic route through good ol' Detroit-its bustling assembly lines now closed-ten miles an hour under the speed limit; blathering away about his latest project, Bowling for Bailouts. He's got his seat pushed all the way back while I'm squeezed-claustrophobic-with tiny windows and no back door. The seats, walls and ceiling seem inches from my face and they're covered with the same beige upholstery as a second-rate coffin. I'd trade my left, uh, you know, for my dad's LTD.
I scream to Mike to let me out but his cell phone's amped up. I catch a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror but it's my face I see, not his. I pound my fist against the window but there's nothing but silence; and from the outside looking in, I realize I'm pounding against an underwater porthole. It dawns on me that I'm not getting younger; that despite those Freedom 55 commercials I'm not getting better, and that my whole aging demographic has helped make a movie about a sinking ship the box office smash of all time.
My wife considers the evidence then jumps at the chance to mock me. "I know, I know," she practically cheers. "You're having a mid-life crisis!"
I consider the evidence: Two kids enrolled in cash-sucking universities, my retirement portfolio a fraction of its former self. My hair's just a memory, muscle mass a bad joke. I want to slap her but she's tougher than me.
I don't know, honey . . . ya THINK?
This wasn't supposed to happen. Just yesterday I was a kid in cut-offs spending my summers on a long, sandy beach, running and swimming and playing til my parents dragged me to bed. Just another yesterday I scored 24 in a high school basketball game, ran a five-minute mile and drank my first beer. Another yesterday I got married, bought a house, had two kids, changed careers, went back to school, re-mortgaged, bought a van, got a dog and . . . oh my God, I am having a mid-life crisis!
And while that was then and this is now, today's reality is even more incriminating than my fading memories. These days, I get injured at the mere thought of competition and no longer believe I'll ever be in shape. Clothes look better on store mannequins than me and pop culture's a language I can't understand. Add to that my net worth's in free-fall and a fraction of my father's when he was my age . . . then realize (like I have) that even he was forced to scrimp in retirement. And though my dog's finally learned to heel, I realize she's old, with maybe two years to live.
I don't like complaining and don't mean to whine, but looking back on my life, I realize that following the Baby Boomers is like being pulled by that horse Kramer fed Beefaroni. I entered the school system when there were so many students anyone with a pulse could get hired as a teacher. I entered the work force when the Boomers had all the good jobs. I'm contributing to a pension fund that the Boomers are sucking dry and approaching retirement when the world's gone to hell. The glass isn't half full or half empty; it's been stomped by a boot and ground into the dirt.
Developmental psychologist Erik Erickson once wrote that "the identity crisis . . . occurs in that period of the life cycle when each youth must forge for himself some central perspective and direction, some working unity, out of the effective remnants of his childhood and the hopes of his anticipated adulthood." Just a wild guess here, but wouldn't a mid-life crisis occur when time runs out on those hopes?
Grasping at straws I look to the tube. A hallucinating housewife tells Dr. Phil she sees crying babies so TV's Ask Jeeves prescribes a life-affirming theme song. I want to hear the Eagles' Take it Easy but get Celtic woodwinds instead. From somewhere, Celine Dion joins in with the haunting theme from Titanic.
I flip to CNN: deficit, decline and huge unemployment, hyperinflation the new Y2K. I look at my wife: she's content, soundly sleeping, while an unlikely President sings Kumbaya.
Mid-life crisis? More likely, just the tip of the iceberg.
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