She’s got Bette Davis eyes . . . and I have Telly Savalas Hair. The art of getting “olderish”

It’s hell getting old.  In fact, I refuse to admit it in the slightest.  Instead I have coined the phrase “olderish” as an apt description of my current condition.  Life is funny that way.  You spend your youth dreaming of the day you will be “old enough”.  Old enough to drive, old enough to vote, old enough to tell mom and dad to go to hell.  Our young lives are spent striving for these milestones of adulthood and our adult lives are spent regretting that these days went by so fast.  At some point, the milestones are lost and the grind begins.  A slow steady trudge toward the grave.  It is a hard thing to adjust to for many of us.  Living life in 15 week intervals is addictive and the constant change it provides makes life less tedious than it otherwise would be.  When you are eventually thrown out into the real world with a fresh face and moist ears you quickly find yourself up to your ass in mortgage payments, car loans, income taxes and all those other delights that you never thought about in your youthful dreams of how great it would be to be an adult.  

And then, as if this all isn’t insulting enough, your body begins to betray you.  Your hairline begins to recede and the lack of chia growth atop your crown is soon replaced by unwanted hair in other locations . . . the ears, the nose and the back, just to name a few.  Joint pain is a daily reminder of the battles fought and lost and the inability to remember your atm pin number is an inconvenience you could do without.  Sneeze and you look like a party favor, jump to your feet too quickly and you sound like the crackling on the fourth of July.  These realities are ever present in my daily routine.  A tweeze here and some icy hot there makes for a realization that you have in fact become as old as you thought your parents were when you were a child.  If age is the prospector, then marriage solidifies its claim.

All the courtesies of courtship slip away and you are left one morning wondering why the hell you ever married someone that farts in their sleep and snors like a locomotive.  Car doors are no longer opened in a gentlemanly fashion and this sentiment is replaced with a “get the fuck in the car or I will leave you in the damned parking lot”.  The wife and I love each other all the same.  Perhaps the blindness of lust has fallen away and been replaced by the all too keen observation that the slob you live with has left you with an empty roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, but it is our ability to see these faults and still find love that makes this sweeter still.  When the sun shines so brightly across my naked scalp she doesn’t say a word but simply pulls on her prescription sunglasses.  And when her flatulence clears a crowded room, I pretend I don’t smell a thing and blame the dog in her defense.  That is love for the aging.

These are lessons difficult to teach and one can only sit back and watch as our fledglings make their own way down the path we have already traveled.  We smile and nod when they say they will never be like us, all the while knowing that they too will one day look in their mirror and see our wrinkled faces staring back at them.  That is the justice of parenthood . . . to eventually give as good as you get.  At this particular age however, my boys still believe their parents to be superheroes and the parent hating angst of the middle teens seems a long way on the horizon.  They still desire to be old enough to cast off the constraints of being ruled by a King and a Queen, but they show much less spite in their display.  My eldest wears deodorant and my youngest, well . . . we will just call him the Samurai’s Apprentice, for it is his recent birth into manhood that is in large part the inspiration of this entry.  He has grown in leaps and bounds in just the first few days of his fifth year of life.  He knows well that he is far from being old enough to drive a car, or vote in a mayoral election, but maybe . . . just maybe he is old enough to wield the Wilkinson Sword?

These days, my children run around the house with a fair bit of autonomy. I don’t feel the need to be in the same room with them at all times and I have long since dispensed with any “baby proofing” procedures in favor of the “you live, you learn” model of parenting.  They are both old enough to know better than to stick a coin in a light socket or play with the steak knives, so how much trouble can they get into?  Right?  We have always treated their bedrooms with a great deal of respect and if they so choose to be left alone we give them their space and a respectful knock before entering.  The youngest will in fact go to his own room when he throws a decent tantrum or finds himself in dutch with the old man in an effort to “heal himself” as he once referred to it.  A sign of genius or a concerning mental condition, I haven’t figured out which yet.  He usually comes out of his room in just a minute or two with dried tears and a heartfelt apology when warranted.  It is also not uncommon for either of my two lads, being independent minded children, to simply slip off to their respective rooms to play for a bit by themselves.  I continue about my day in the kitchen or laundry room and will only occasionally make my way upstairs to check on them in the event things have gotten a little too quiet.  Silence usually means trouble making from my experience . . . not as a parent, but as a child myself.

This day was not an exception to that rule and as I helped assist the eldest in an endeavor, his younger brother became bored with the goings on downstairs and made a break for his room.  Within moments, he began to descend the stairs in a cautious manner and calmly announced . . . “I’m bleeding”.  Now I was a kid once too and boys are prone to injury.  I always had a scab or two about my body as my two young men do and I too liked to pick at them.  This calm proclamation about the production of blood was not unfamiliar territory.  I made my way to the stairs to admonish him for picking at a scab and lead him back upstairs for a Sponge Bob bandaid, only to find his face covered in blood.  It looked as though he had turned vampire or cannibal and feasted on the flesh of another.  He had smeared the blood to such a degree that his arms and hands were covered as well.  The amount of blood was astonishing and alarming to the point of panic.  Being a seasoned parent, I kept my cool and threw him up on the counter for an inspection.  He had a paper thin cut on his upper lip and after a quick wash up, it appeared to be his only wound.  


At first blush I would have thought that he had gotten devil may care with licking an envelope and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how he had injured himself.  Keeping pressure on the tiny wound prevented him from talking, not that he was going to anyway, for I could tell something was afoot.  When the bleeding finally subsided the inquisition began.  All he would tell me was that he was in MY bathroom “making sure it was clean” and somehow injured his lip.  Clearly something doesn’t add up.  For one thing, he rarely goes in my bedroom and adjacent bath without invitation . . . remember the rule about respecting someone else’s bedroom?  Second of all, I know for sure that this kid wasn’t up there with housekeeping on his mind.  Now, here is a good tip for all you parents out there.  If you really want to get inside the mind of your child, make their sibling do the dirty work.  When I am playing Sherlock, my eldest is my able Watson.  At the age of 9, he can conceive of childish thoughts that would evade my aging intellect, things that I would dismiss as preposterous or inconceivable.

It should read "Free Your Skin . . . From Your Face"

I sent the eldest upstairs to CSI the master bath and he came down with a preliminary report.  “Dad, I think he cut himself with your razor.”  Elementary my dear Watson!  In his description of the events that lead to the blood bath the youngest mentioned two colors . . . white and green.  Any guess on the color of the Wilkinson Sword?  The stinging misery of a shaving wound is harsh enough, I wasn’t about to add any further discipline to the mix.  I simply gave him a well thought out lecture as to the dangers of household items and reminded him that anything that is in my room is off limits.  I am sure that the thoughtful words went in one ear and out the other, but the buzzsaw that is the Wilkinson Sword will remind him of the error of his ways every time he eats something even slightly acidic over the next several days.  

"Who Loves Ya Baby?"

Ultimately I am to blame.  I thoughtlessly left my razor on the sink where little hands could reach and for that I owe him an apology.  It is not in my standard operating procedure to leave it in this location and it is a heartwarming no-brainer that he would be enamored with this item.  What little boy hasn’t watched his father shave in envy and amazement?  Both of my boys have witnessed this with me and you can see the curiosity in their eyes as they watch each stroke wipe away the stubble from Superman’s aging cheeks.   They still want to be just like dad and unfortunately, with a face that looks like it was attacked by an ally cat thanks to the kind folks at Wilkinson, the youngest already is.  That is all I have for today. R