America, we are at the arc of fading prominence.
And it wasn’t like we didn’t know this time would come.
Like so many of America’s problems, this was out there, clear as day to see, but we chose to go on with our days, blissfully ignorant until there was no choice but to come face to face with the inevitable.
Aging.
Well, at least some of us.
Yes, yes. I know many of the sages that proclaim that it’s just a number.
But so is unemployment, the federal deficit and the current life expectancy of the EU.
Numbers have consequences.
And true, age is ameliorated somewhat by the life enhancing/prolonging technologies and techniques of our day; the lotions and potions of modern science.
“50 is the new 40,” and so it goes until you get to 30 where its, well, OK to be 30.
Unless your 30.
Personally, advancing years didn’t necessarily have an impact on how old I felt.
Most years, I had to check in with peers to see what it was that I was supposed to be doing, and then decide whether it was cause for panic of celebration that I was not walking in lockstep.
But this analytical view of age was abruptly shattered for me recently by the true arbiter of our society; pop culture.
We’ve always been a youth culture. TV, movies, sports, song…it’s a young persons game.
Consider that Lindsay Lohan seems like she’s been around for ever and she’s just 25…..
No, it’s not the fresh faces that define us – its the faces we knew that are growing with us.
Case in point – Chandler Bing.
We all remember the dry witted Chandler from “Friends.” His roommate Joey and his girlfriend and eventual wife, Monica. If you didn’t have a friend like Chandler, you probably wouldn’t have minded having one.
But I settle into watch an episode of the “Good Wife” a few weeks back (one of the best drama’s on TV, btw), and there’s Chandler Bing. But he’s not a nice, affable do-gooder anymore. He’s a souless, ethically challenged lawyer and all around creep, running for governor, no less – expertly played by Matthew Perry.
When did Chandler have time to become such a creep? What happened to him and Monica moving the suburbs and doing a spin-off of “Modern Family”?
Hard on the heels of that experience, I rented the not-so-new “Star Trek” movie, iconic to begin with as a fresh take of a cult favorite twice over.
And then, not 20 minutes into the movie, there’s Winona Ryder – playing Spock’s mother.
Here was the symbolic, directionless X’er who bought groceries with her father’s gas card and chose Ethan Hawke grunch over Ben Stiller materialism in the coming of age movie, “Reality Bites.” And now she’s playing a Vulcan parent in a Star Trek reboot?
Was it too much to expect a stop along the way? You know, the couple, now married, growing medical marijuana outside Seattle, with Ethan playing grunge rock at happy hours, wondering whether they sold out?
But it was not to be.
All of these alarming signs came to a head in, of all places, a doctor’s office.
There, on the table, was a glossy magazine with a picture of Sharon Stone, still looking good twenty years after her provocatively sexy role in “Basic Instinct.”
It was a the cover of AARP.
No, no, no!
Sharon’s supposed to be busy seducing cops to get material for her next book (Basic Instinct) or marrying for money while she could only love a pimp (Casino).
Sharon Stone is not supposed to be a poster child (pardon the pun) for retirees?
But there it was – in color no less.
The reality was harsh and unrelenting.
So, I could have health, strength, wisdom. I could keep an outisder’s detached view of the aging process. But I could no longer deny that the process was moving with me in it.
The truth is that having been center stage for so long, it was an abrupt reality check that me and my cohorts were no longer part society’s most crucial demographic. Pollsters, marketers, advertisers- the pulse takers for politics, food, music, entertainment – have moved beyond us to younger vistas, while Sizzler taunts me with promotions for 4:30 dinner specials.
But after taking it all in, I’ve made my peace with the perception of progression.
So long as I don’t feel my age, I am under no obligation to act it.
And, second acts are America’s specialty, so the decent interval between today and the end of a long life has the possibility of a completely different and exciting life in it’s own right. Chandler, Winona and Sharon have, in their own way, shown the path.
And in today’s economy, what’s wrong with a half priced steak special in the late afternoon…..