On "Mid-Life Crisis"

When I was a kid I heard the term "mid-life crisis." I think it was in a TV sitcom, and the sufferer of said syndrome had just purchased a zippy, red sports car, much to his wife's disdain and ridicule. I saw this and thought, "When someone has a 'mid-life crisis', they want to buy a zippy, red sports car." I never fully understood the term or its implications.

Flash forward 25 years. Now I'm 40. Now I get it. "Mid-life crisis." It has nothing to do with a sports car. It has everything to do with what the sports car represents. "Mid-life crisis" is when you reach that point in your life where you have lived enough life to look back upon and assess things. From that vantage point you can see all of the things you've seen and done and accomplished...and all those you have not. When the list of things you want to do and have yet to get to looms larger than the list of things you've done, you start to feel restless, like maybe time will run out.

When the young stud in your office, who's really just starting his life, comes in with stories of his most recent weekend's amorous conquest(s!), you think, no matter how loving or kind or beautiful your own wife is, you think of all the women over the years who caught your eye but you didn't approach. And you kick yourself.

When the middle-management schlub announces his resignation because his little business venture on the side is finally taking off and he's going to be rich, you think of all the great ideas you had way back when that you just never had time to pursue. And you kick yourself.

When you sit at a red light in your minivan, and the young kid in the lane next to you revs the engine on his little Honda or Mitsubishi or Subaru ghetto sled, you let him pop the clutch and leave you in his exhaust cloud. But you think back to the days when you were his age, and to the big block muscle car you had -- it was old even then -- that would have humbled the little runt and had him spitting out the chunks of rubber you would have kicked in his face. IF you hadn't had to get rid of it for a more "sensible" car as your wedding day approached. And then you mash the pedal to the floor just to see what that minivan can do. You're not impressed. But it's enough that your coffee cup tumbles out of the cup holder and anoints the floor of your van.

At the fast-food restaurant you see that cute little number talking to her friends and you're of the mind that, if you were single, you'd pop on over there and turn on that old charm and smile, and you'd have a shot. But then you realize that she and her friends have noticed you staring, and they start to giggle to each other. And you hear, just above a whisper, perhaps on purpose, the words, "bald," "old," and "fart," And you realize that, though you may still have it, they don't want it. And then they get up, and each is sporting a jacket that reads "Class of '07," and this ain't a college town!

And that's when you feel it. You're no longer young. You can no longer move like the wind with the reflexes of a cat. You're not yet so old that all you can do is pass wind with the stealth of a cat...hacking up a hairball. No, you're right in the middle, that transitional phase where you can feel the youth trickling from your muscles and joints, where body parts ache from just sitting that never ached before, in a preview of what's to come, where you realize that you look a great deal like your father looked in those photos of him in HIS 40s, when you were so young that you thought HE was old. And you want none of this. You want it to stop before it goes too far. But you know it will not stop.

No matter how much you've done, it's all the things you didn't do. It's all the things you still want to do but know you probably won't get to, or your body can't handle any more.

Welcome to your mid-life crisis. Time to buy that zippy, red sports car and hunt down that kid in the ghetto sled.