So you may have noticed, though most likely not, that I have been absent from the pages of your hometown paper.  Regardless, I’m quite sure that you’ve felt a peculiar longing, an unidentifiable sadness that you’ve been unable to isolate.  If you were to think on it I’m sure you would recall many a day spent in solitary drifting, eyes downcast, your melancholy sigh barley audible above the sad shuffling of your feet. Well allow me to apologize but it couldn’t be helped for you see this past July I reached my 40^th year (or is it my 41^st year? Hell, I turned 40 OK?) and right on cue, I have spent the last several months in the throes of a mid-life crisis. It wasn’t pretty and in typical fashion I couldn’t even do that right.

I am unable to share with you all of the grisly details, after all I do have a reputation to protect and the world is full of the jealous and covetous who would like nothing better than to knock me off of the pinnacle of Mt. Righteousness.  I will not give them the satisfaction. However I will share with you a few crusty nuggets of my despair. 

I discovered, much to my dismay, that one of the effects of my MLC was a loss of joie de vivre, my ability to look at the world through idiocy colored fake nose and glasses. In short, I didn’t feel funny and was suffering a major case of writer’s block for which I had no literary Metamucil.  After all, I was 40 now; a true adult. I had reached the age that, as a child, I had always associated with being old and maturity must take hold at some point right? I mean how long can one continue to laugh about bowel movements and other bodily functions? (Apparently a little longer than 40-hee hee). But my lost joviality was the main reason for self-imposed furlough from this paper.

Yes I know there are readers out there at this very moment laughing and shaking their heads at the thought of 40 being old. In fact one obviously senile gentleman told me many months ago (and quoted here in this column) that the 40’s are considered the new 30’s. To this man I say—your nurse is here to take you to the park. Oh and please don’t forget your pants this time. 

Forties are what they have always been, the mid-life point. And that’s if we’re lucky enough to live to eighty. It is a time to take stock in one’s life, at one’s accomplishments; our successes as well as our failures. To see where we’ve been and where we’re going and most importantly to buy a flashy new sports car and let the wind wreak havoc with what remains of our hair.  

Well let me just say this; I got gypped. Have you priced sports cars these days?  I took a liking to the 2005 Ford Mustang, which runs about 25-30K. Not a king’s ransom but as you may recall just a year or so prior to my mid-life crisis I experienced a lay-off crisis and though I’m thankful to be working now I have also experienced a little shrinkage in the paycheck. So the sports car was out and somehow a shiny new Schwinn just didn’t do it for me even with the banana seat and the sissy bar.

My point here is that I couldn’t even afford a proper mid-life crisis. It’s tough to have a decent crisis in a fading 1993 mocha frost Mercury Sable. Sort of reinforces all those feelings of failure.  What next, move back with my parents?  Sure it would have its perks. Mom’s a good cook. They have central air conditioning. I could probably get my old room back but we’d have to find another spot for the treadmill and the computer. My younger sister won’t turn 40 for another year and a half so she won’t need her room for awhile. By then I should be over the worst of it.

In any event I will try to return to the hallowed pages of the Clayton Pioneer as often as possible. In the meantime I would like to say thank you to those people who, despite having done little to deserve it, have been there for me. I suppose if there is an upside to having a mid-life crisis it’s that we are reminded of the people who are there for us, who love us in spite of ourselves. You know who you are.