I Have Become The Old Man I Laughed At

It happened. Just now, the last couple hours. Unceremoniously to the hilt. A whimper not a bang. No seismic tipping of any mythical scales, no grand spilling of sands in an hourglass, no alleged "senior moment" of not being able to find my glasses which are perched on my head. No, after all, the incident that made me officially an old man was one of simple nature, climate-induced. It was the heat. And the humidity. Blasted by days of the hot stuff, topped off by today's worst one yet/it can't get any worse, I succumbed to old age. For the last 2+ hours I sat outside wearing an old man's tank top white undershirt.

For good and bad, I am no Stanley Kowalski. On me, the scanty piece of cotton is no muscle man shirt, and certainly not the dubiously tagged "wife beater." I guess, while I'm succumbing, I might as well go the whole hog and virginally write the phrase I despise: It is what it is--an old man's white tank top undershirt, or, to really sound ancient, undergarment. I can't tell you the last time by shoulders were bared to the world, last millennium would be my guess. And yes, there are gnarly chest hairs stretching up for a peak at the new world from my cleavage. A sore sight for any eyes indeed.

Back in my carefree youth we--fine--I used to laugh at the neighbor old guy who would sit in a lawn chair on his front stoop on hot nights like this in his old man undergarment. Tonight I am his spawn. A more modest spawn, though. I sat on my back porch, figuring that if I mounted the front stoop in such attire the neighborhood watch committee would make a collective call to the SWAT team. But I was visible, if not ostensatiously so. Visible enough, though, it seems: The neighborbood boy who likes to ride his bike up my next door neighbor's driveway and cut across my backyard to ride back down my driveway, often stopping to chat, aborted his pleasure cruise tonight, I believe. I heard behind me the bike's hissing coming up the driveway, but just about where he would have come into eye contact with my blinding upper body flesh and only slightly more blinding undergarment, the hissing stopped, I heard a turning sound, then the hissing going away. No hellos were exchanged. Rest easy, son, the world is more full of startling sights than you can comprehend. You'll survive.

Now I could flaunt my Gemini status and attempt to mitigate the crushing news of my descent into the netherworld of old age by stating that as I sat there so exposed on so many levels I was reading Thomas Pynchon--hey, the old man's old, but he's still way hip. But really, who's kidding who? So, now that I've crossed the threshold (fleshold?) and have lived to tell the sordidly depressing tale, I guess I should consider myself liberated and embrace this new (old) development. Screw trimming nose and ear hair. Forget sequestering farts in crowded public spaces. Start damning kids these days. Right? Sure, I can't see myself driving to the 7/Eleven and walking into the place and ordering a senior discounted Slurpee in this attire for at least another five-eight years, but hellfire, since I've broken the seal, I might as well as hell start indulging myself in some of the prerogatives of the old man. I'm mature after all. Mature enough to finally consider the literal cool over the figurative cool. And baby, whether I'm rocking it or not, this here old man tank top white undergarment has me feeling the coolest I've been in days. I'm kind of liking this newfound old age wisdom.