I am fifty-eight, going on fifty-nine: there's a song in here somewhere!

I'll be fiddling some new stories from my old past for the next twenty years......

I am fast approaching my 59th birthday.  During these 59 years I have (mostly and like most people) remembered my name, my (various) addresses, my social security number, and my date of birth.  One would think that having a firm grip on my date of birth, I would also have a firm grip on my age.  Alas, this has not always been the case.  I doubt that anyone (except the truly obsessive compulsive) know their EXACT age (i.e. year, month, date, hour, minute).  Only children know that they are six years and eight months old.  I believe they know this because time moves slowly for children, and they're doing that torturous countdown to their big payday (their next birthday).  Once achieving voting age, or possibly drinking age, 'adult's generally settle questions of their age with a firm and accurate response:  "I am twenty-three, forty-six, sixty-four..." etc...!

While I have succeeded in many things in my life (and failed in a number equal to, or in excess of the number of successes that I claim) I have twice failed to remember my correct age.  When I was fifty-two I spent many months (until corrected) espousing the false belief that I was fifty-three.  Which then led to me declaring my actual fifty-third year as my "fifty-three-'B'"year.   I attributed this mistake to an episode of aphasia, aneurism, stroke, or early-onset senility. As any hypochondriac would do, I took great care to notice any other symptoms that might support a diagnosis of the previously listed illnesses.  Alas, no hairy tongue, spasms, nor anal leakage were to be found, and my fears of mental deficiency were allayed.

Only a fool walks with confidence (and only an idiot wears high heels on cobblestone streets in America's colonial cities - but I digress).  I proceeded through my fifty-fourth year believing (i.e. walking with confidence) that my earlier mistake was a 'one-off', an aberration, something not to be repeated.  Some years later, it was brought to my attention that I spent my fifty-fifth year believing that I was fifty-six.   Me-thinks, I spot a trend!

Last year, I celebrated my fifty-eighth birthday.  I confirmed that I had been fifty-seven for twelve months, and on my fifty-eight birthday, I did the math, had my math checked by several competent(?) mathematically inclined individuals, and confirmed that I was indeed fifty-eight years old.  I posted this statistic in various social media  so that I could readily reference those posts before embarrassing myself in public forums by stating an incorrect age.

I am happy to report, that in this: my fifty-eighth year, I have, for an entire twelve months, remembered that I am fifty-eight.  This is quite possibly, the biggest accomplishment of this year.

It might strike you as odd that I list this as an accomplishment.  To understand the present, we must visit the past, and so I will explain how my mistake occurred and then move on to other topics:

As mentioned earlier (but for reasons unexplained and unknown) I spent my fifty-second year describing myself as a fifty-three year old.   I did this for several months.   My partner of what I believe are nineteen(ish) years heard my mistake on several occasions, over several months, and apparently decided that an early intervention or correction of my mistaken belief was too much effort on his part to correct.

One day, a day where he must not have been enchanted or pre-occupied with some other shiny thing in the distance, he heard me mistakenly describe myself as a fifty-three year old.  It was then, that he parsed the four or five sentences that he sends my way on a yearly basis to give some credibility to this thing we call a relationship and informed me that I was, in fact, only fifty two.

This happened only weeks before my fifty-third birthday, which I suppose absolved him of any gift-giving duties for that year.  After all,  facing one's fifty-fourth birthday only to be given the gift-of-youth and a wonderful 'do-over' of one's fifty-third year is as the credit card commercial would say: "Priceless"!

I was fifty-three years old for two years.  Yes, it was rather imbecilic to have thrust myself forwards in time as opposed to backwards.  After all, I did have the face of a fifty-one-and-a-half-year-old, and in a dimly lit bar where the patrons had been drinking heavily all evening I might pass for a hard-ridden forty-nine(ish).  Was I so desperate for a compliment that I added a year to my age so that my diminished handsomeness could be explained by the ravages of time that I had not yet accrued?   Am I so needy that I had no qualms about accepting or inspiring someone to state in the patronizing tone(s) that we generally reserve for those in hospice care, or recently out of heart lung transplant surgery: "You're looking good"?  I'm confused by the definitions of 'implied' and 'inferred', but I think in the case of  "You're looking good" it is both correctly implied and inferred that a lie has been spoken! 

Either way, I would have appreciated the never spoken nor heard commendation of my youth, vitality, good looks and vigor.  When I look back on the youth that I was at fifty-three, from this nearly fifty-nine year old perch, I recall that on more than a few occasions I looked into the mirror and commanded the mirror to do that which Pinocchio's girlfriend is alleged to have said:

"Lie to me baby"!

Six years ago, or otherwise put: way back in those glory days, I continued on with my life referring to my age as 53-B.   That year, I was confident that my confidant would correct any other misperceptions about myself, himself, the world order, or the checking account(s), in a timely fashion.   Imagine how surprised I was when I later (and recently) learned that the checking account was then (and always has been) in disarray, Hillary didn't win, and that three years ago I had spent the entire year describing myself as fifty-six when I was really fifty-five.

I now have a firm grip on the checking accounts, and my correct age.  I have given up any hope of having a grip on the world order, or understanding the machinations of that incredibly brilliant mind of the person with whom I plan to spend (at the time of this writing) at least another day with.

Most men don't really plan to live past the age of thirty.   I can honestly tell you that I had absolutely no plan to live past twenty.  Then I did, and thought that the age of thirty would certainly be a bridge-too-far.  Then thirty came and went.  Forty seemed achievable, but it seemed an unlikely achievement, and I behaved in a fashion that in lesser men would have resulted in their last breath being taken months, if not years before that birthday.  It was the age of fifty where I uttered Scooby-Doo's famous: "Ruh-roo"!

To die young is tragic.  To die in one's prime is sad.  To die after the age of fifty elicits mourning, but not sadness.  Let's face it..... should the grim reaper come a knocking on the last day of my fifty-eighth year the world will (in unison) be relieved that they'll no longer need to hear:  "I once worked in Paris "!

Which bring me to my point (yes there is a point)!  As we go along in life, most of us get to 'invent' ourselves.   At birth we're given a little 'kit' of identity: racial identity, religious affiliation, socio-economic position, intelligence, etc...    If you stay in one place long enough, you take your identity kit and build your life off of that.  The people you meet today, are the people who have known you the day before, the year, before, and the decade(s) before. The stories that you tell today, need no preface, no foundation, and no introduction.  The people who are hearing your current story about today's event are very familiar with the sights, the sounds, the places, the context, the history, the why's, the where's, the how's, and the when's that led up to the comedy or tragedy you're regaling them with at this moment.  I think there is some parable about the difficulty of becoming a saint in one's hometown.  To be beatified, one really must move someplace where no one could possibly ever learn that you once (insert this or that) or failed to (insert this or that) kicked a dog, raised an eyebrow, ate the last Oreo cookie, or murdered the butler and buried him in the wine cellar.

Owing mostly to careers that had me working odd hours, I could not meet potential friends for coffee, lunch, or other friend-building activities.  My vocational and avocational activities had me interacting with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people every week and so joining potential friends at stadium events, parades, or activities that involved large crowds (and long lines at bathrooms) never interested me.

I was rarely found where most people where found when most people wanted to be there. I love the beach: on a weekday afternoon, to watch the setting sun. It's the best time of day, because there's rarely anyone there, and the folks that are there are (like myself) deeply appreciative of all that surrounds them (all that surrounds them being sand, surf, and sunset).   I'd love to have played volleyball on the beach.   But volleyball is a tough game to play when you're alone.  Same with throwing Frisbees, baseballs, and footballs.  Frankly, the only thing I've ever thrown on a beach is an attitude!

The beach on the weekend, or on crowded mid-morning: nope, not me, no thank you very much, and bless-your-heart!   I won't stop you from thinking of me as some Heathcliff wandering the moors. (Editorial note: I wasn't sure who Heathcliff was, and truthfully I was taking a literary stab at that wandering-the-moors thing.  I impressed myself when I fact-checked whether Heathcliff did, in fact, wander moors.   To you - my dear illiterati - he did).  I have wandered the fields and streams of Camden and Bucks Counties, but I doubt that I ever did so with thoughts as languid and eyes as limpid as Heathcliffs.

Thusly, I have failed in my life, to maintain long-term relationships.  Which presented me with a rather unique editorial possibilities when it came to creating my personae.  While many may have assumed that I murdered the butler and buried him in the pantry, I don't have to tell anyone of that 'mistake'.  I can paint my past with whatever Crayola suits my purpose - there is (generally) no one around me to point out that I'm no Monet and my repetitive Stacks of Wheat aren't major works of art, but just my variations on (verbal and written) themes that I've been presenting since my seventh birthday.

My mistake has been the mistake of anyone who has ever attempted to write, publish, or create. Once you've given birth to 'your story', 'your painting', 'your photograph', 'your arrangement of toss pillows', etc... it is painfully difficult to go back so that the wheat can be separated from the chaff.   The Art Institute of Chicago has a wonderful exhibit of Monet's Stacks of Wheat.  It's six or seven renditions that the artist did.  It's very impressive.  Did he throw out the other one hundred renditions of this scene, or had he intended to whittle down to only one or two?   Renoir's brilliance is (I think) slightly diminished when one visit's Philadelphia's Barnes Museum to be overwhelmed with the incredible number of Renoir's that Dr. Barnes purchased.  The world will be a better place when I (upon entering my fifty-ninth year) begin a judicious pruning and editing of my life-stories.

I have dragged too many old stories, old jokes, and found few too many new acquaintances or folks who've not heard my one-time award winning canards. I must now face the fact that it is entirely likely that I am to live for a decade or more.  I simply can not hope to remain relevant with my oft-told, and too-often-heard and read war stories.  If asked: "What did you do during the war on Libya?" , I can only answer that I attended fashion shows in Paris, and selected fashionable frocks for the women in Philadelphia to purchase at some 75% off sale.   The frocks failed to sell because the women of Philadelphia lacked the taste, the finances, or the occasion to wear these perfect-for-Paris garments.   While I castigate the women of Philadelphia for their thrift, I will commend them for their prudence.  We were selling fashion that we deemed 'timeless'.  If it's timeless, then why not wait until time lowers the price of the garment to a still absurd price, but a price that isn't equal to a semester's tuition at an ivy-league college?  Also, it wasn't that our client's lacked taste: they simply had the gall to NOT APPRECIATE our taste.  Harumph!

I recognize that should I celebrate my eightieth birthday, I'm likely to do so in some nursing home, in some pee stained pajamas telling 'Juan' (my nurse) "I used to live in a big house".   Unless I come up with some new stories, 'Juan' or his equivalent, is my solitary future.  I must now dig deep and make my C-list, and D-list stories as interesting and as easily told as the headlines I've been spouting these many, many, many, many, many, ((I think five 'manys' is the correct count of decades) decades.  Since there are too few people to really fact-check my 'minor' stories, and since I do exhibit a talent for 'wordsmithing', I'm sure that I can forge and hone my verbal hatchet to carve and clear my repertoire of the dead wood that really should have been used as kindling long, long ago!  Should my old stories fail to act as kindling for the new fires that I'll need to keep my future hearths warm, and my candles lit in the windows, then I'll be doomed to a life of tapioca and casino tours with my caregivers knowing nothing more about my vivid life experience other than: I once worked in Paris - ugh!
 
Recognizing my fate, and realizing that the fork in my future road might have several tines (some of them NOT facing me, or being jabbed into my heart) I am putting the pedal to the metal, my feet to the ground, and taking action to entrap, ensnare, and ensure that (at least) on a bi-yearly basis, I will interact with another human being in something called a social setting.

This is not an easily achieved goal and I'm afraid that I must pounce upon what few opportunities present themselves for social advancement with the predatory skills of a priest at the Boy Scout Jamboree.   Should someone make the mistake of inviting me to a social gathering, and in the ever-more-rare event of me having enough steam to attend the event, I head out the door and look to this social occasion the way passengers on the Titanic regarded the last life raft, or life preserver.  I like to wear expensive fragrances, but there is no disguising the stench that emanates from every pore, every follicle and every cuticle of those of us who are socially desperate.

On the rare occasion that I can be found 'socializing' I can generally be found hawkishly circling the buffet table waiting for my unsuspecting prey to deep-throat a deviled egg or canapé so that they can not possibly react to my introduction with anything but a nod and a 'gulp'.   Seizing upon their vulnerability, I  leap forward with some tale that I've selected from a decade that I've enjoyed, presuming that this decade is in fact a time period that my victim might most relate to.   Most of my victims can't walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone handle a canapé, a glass of wine, and hold a conversation, so I have at least a moment or two to sink my talons in with one of my tried and true ice breakers.   The problem here, is that (now, and only recently) there is generally someone nearby who has known me for far too long, and heard this or that story far too many times.  Thusly, I must stick to some version of the truth, or the truthiness that I had most recently been peddling.   This presents a challenge to someone who cannot be relied upon to remember his correct age!

As I mentioned earlier, I won't stop you from thinking of me as some Heathcliff upon the Moors.  In fact, I knew very little about Wuthering Heights, and as always, I have but to ask the universe a question and the answer is soon provided:  Wuthering Heights (with Tom Hardy as Heathcliff) was shown on television last night - and I see that indeed I do have much in common with him! Alone in a crowd - yes.   The ugly duckling - I can relate.  But, the reality (when viewed objectively) is that I was (and probably am) more popular than I thought I was, and more highly regarded than I currently think I am.  Heathcliff's moods and actions (in context) are understandable, and the Linton's are really just as fowl as he.  I think, that with a good home staging (i.e. a coat of paint, some new furnishings, new toss pillows, new drapes, and the sofa turned on the diagonal) Heathcliff's mood would have been substantially lightened and Wuthering Heights could have been a very successful Airbnb!

My loneliness was and is much more contemporary in its setting than anything the Bronte sisters could have imagined or described   The Moors of Katy TX are really bayous, creeks, with man-made lakes and retention ponds exceeding the romantically named bayous and creeks in number.   I (and others like me) are no longer found in the moors surrounding our castles, we are no Wuthering Heights we are The Wuthering Stepford Wives wandering T.J.Maxx, Marshalls, and Homegoods for clearance decorative items, to feather the various pied-a-terre, townhomes, mansions, and mansionettes in which we're residing.

On the plus side of my lonely existence, I've rarely had to suffer crowded stores, stand in lines, wait for tables in restaurants, take vacations in peak season, or suffer the normal complaints of life.  Don't get me wrong: the complaints that I suffer(as a long-suffering Irishman) seem (to me) far from normal, and upon reflection, I probably would have preferred a long line at Sam's Club (never please God, never, WalMart) then some of the lonely-in-a-crowd, and just plain lonely moments, days, months, and years that I've endured.

Because of my vocational and avocational circumstances, and the fact that I've moved several times to places far away from my previous residences, I've not had a coterie of people who know me very well.  There are people who I have known from decades past, but we rarely spent more than five or six years in close proximity to one another.  I can point to many people on social media that I have known since the 1970s, 80s, 90s, etc... and with many of them, I've picked up a phone and it's as if the last time we spoke was just yesterday.   My friends and colleagues who knew me in the 80's, have no details to add to my stories that are set after the new millennia.   My friends from 2010 can (or could not) similarly not fact check my stories from my 1990s escapades.   This was true until I started memorializing these stories in blogs, posts, blurbs, on-line videos, and other traceable Google-y searches.  I must now be more judicious in the telling of my old stories.   There can be no more 'colorizing' of my past glories or indignities.  I'm not Ted Turner, and there will be no more enhancements of my colorful or colorless past.

As I approach my fifty-ninth year, I have vowed to bury some of the canards that have long been my verbal stock-in-trade.   Those old birds were molting, and should have been set free from their perches long ago.   My stories will no longer be the headlines that have bored ye all to death.  Y'all have known me too long, and are no longer just acquaintances.   I shall come up with new headlines.  Because, while that was then, and this is now; at some point, this will be then, and there will be a new now...

As time progresses, we have experiences that become part of our personal resumes.  Mistakes made in youth that aren't documented, published, or witnessed by too many people can (over time) be discarded or massaged into a more positive light.   A petty theft or vandalism becomes a folly-of-youth, and amorous misadventures are coyly attributed to the hormonal imbalances of teenage years.  I can honestly state that I have NEVER: been accused, caught, tried, or convicted.  Now, that's not to say, I quite possibly, should have, could have, and might have, (at the caprice of fate) NOT be able to make the above stated claim(s).

To say the least, I have lived an eventful life (again - never caught, never convicted).  I have lived several places, and met many new people along the way.   My acquaintances have been (at best) fleeting.   I don't have the pleasure of family and friends who've known me for many years.  Thusly, I must build a 'personality' that I hope will suit each and every person that I've newly met.    In past years, and with each new acquaintance I would trot out (what I believed to be) some new and improved version of myself.

The new and improved version of myself was rarely met with instant acclaim, and like a turtle I would tuck that version quickly back inside my shell.  Over time, I found myself presenting myself to new acquaintances with versions of myself that had proven themselves successful in similar (if not all) settings.  Much like a Borscht-belt comedian, an aging Veteran, a now-bankrupt millionaire, or once powerful (now powerless) politician, I trot out the 'sound-bites' that (I think -and have thought) worked best.  I pepper my conversations of successes with the inevitable reversals of fortunes that follow any type of success.  I wish my new acquaintances to know that I too, am "of-the-people".

Over time, I realize that my Devil-Wears-Prada experiences are rarely relatable to the hoi-polloi that I most commonly find myself in company with.   Thusly, I try (and tried) only to reference those salad days when in the company of a literally 'well-heeled' (think: Manolo, Vittorio, Jimmy....) crowd.   I do reference my travels and travails in France because in Houston we are more than likely to find ourselves in an international community (not bragging - the oil industry is a 'one world' kind of workplace) and frankly (bless your little New Jersey hearts) I've eschewed my humble New Jersey beginnings for a decidedly more upscale (but known to only a few) Bucks County place of origination.   I do this not for purposes of snobbery (oh sure, you say), but to communicate to some new acquaintance that I am not Albert/Starina in The Birdcage or Roger Bannister in The Stepford Wives.   I am not these characters.  Well, I'm not exactly, NOT these characters either.  I am:  NOT AS STUPID AS I ACT!  Believe me: no one, could possibly walk and chew gum and be as stupid as I act!

If I meet the newly acquainted with stories of how my life can be seen on the wide screen in such films as 'Philadelphia', 'Rent', 'It's My Party', 'The Boys in the Band', or "Priscilla: Queen of the Desert' I am unlikely to find kindred spirit, and am most likely to be the only one in the room who can recite the memorable lines from the above named movies.   I might just was well hand out a tray of leeches and ask everyone if we want who wants to play Humphrey Bogart in African Queen (a decidedly straight role in spite of the title and the actors).

So I will (and have) conversed about my life being more Philadelphia Story, than Philadelphia.  More New York, New York, than Rent.  More Caberet, than Schindler's List.   But the reality is, that like Heathcliff, I've most often wandered the metaphorical moors with a shovel to cuddle with the bones of a life that could have, and should have been.

In my fifty-ninth year, I have vowed to bury some of the canards that have long been my verbal stock-in-trade.   Those old birds were molting, and should have been set free from their perches long ago.   My stories will no longer be the headlines that have bored ye all to death.  Y'all have known me too long, and are no longer just acquaintances.   I shall come up with new headlines.  Because, while that was then, and this is now; at some point, this will be then, and there will be a new now.   Surely, with my observational skills, something interesting has happened and is worth telling since I last strolled the boulevards and rues of Paris 

Did I ever tell you....