Get Your OWG Right Here

So I'm feeling pretty good yesterday, just like a man who effected the perfect mix of caf and decaf in his coffee maker should feel. On my way to work I had the quickest, most efficient post office stop of my life--no waiting for me but I managed to make the clerk wait while I shuffled through my wallet looking for the five bucks to pay for my ten stamps. Yeah, it was a day to whistle. Then, as soon as I walk into work, I'm greeted by my boss's slyly smiling mug. To make a long story short, the boss asked me if, when I was working at Borders, I had ever made a mix tape for a customer. Well, seeing that I have made mix tapes for just about every sentient person on the planet, of course my answer was yes. A couple years ago a customer was upset that the CD he ordered, a Lee Michaels one with his only real hit, "Do You Know What I Mean," on it, was unavailable. So in the best customer service, which is my natural default setting, I told the guy, no problem. The next day I had a CD with the guy's much-coveted song along with a bunch of great obscure original versions of songs that became famous via covered versions (operating on the seemingly false assumption that "Do You Know What I Mean" was covered by Peter Wolf/J. Geils Band). Anyway, I called the guy up, left a message that his personalized CD was waiting for him, and that was it. He picked it up sometime when I wasn't there, and I never heard from him again. Well, it turns out the guy has been trying to track me down, I guess. He told my boss he had been to various bookstores looking for me. The kicker, the thing that made my boss smile slyly, was that at first the guy thought my boss was me. Now in a very general, squinting across a football field kind of way, my boss and I kind of resemble each other. The guy thought my boss might have been me because, in his words, he was looking for an "older white guy."

I'm two years older than my boss, the oldest guy at my present place of work. Methinks the biggest contributing factor to my boss's let's face it shit-eating grin is that although he might have felt old being confused for an "older white guy," he could take comfort in the fact that although he may be an old white guy, in this case there is an older white guy, namely me.

As they say in the Major Leagues, it's a short passage of time between being a prospect and being a suspect. If indeed one's forties are a time of middle-age crisis, a renewed "search for identity," then I guess my search is now concluded--I am the Older White Guy (OWG).

I think we can all agree that one of the greatest one-liners in all of musical history is this one from Prince's "Kiss": "Act your age, not your shoe size" (for the record I'm exactly six times my shoe size). I was reminded of this line yesterday as I bristled with all sorts of mixed emotions. I was kind of elated that my admittedly great mix tape had encouraged a total stranger to seek me out. But I was also a bit depressed at being described as an OWG, well, really just the O part. But then (and let me just add here, for the benefit of my younger readers who may not be aware of such things, at one time the pop universe virtually revolved around the diminutive Purple One's skinny, pastel-thonged ass) Prince's squeal echoed through my consciousness. What I heard in that wonderful, double-tracked exhortation was not admonishment, but encouragement--embrace it, Dan, embrace.

And so I stand before you today (actually sit, my back's killing me) a fully proud, fully accepting, Older White Guy. Now I realize the OWG moniker might not possess the same hip cachet of Older Black Guy or Older Native American Guy, but dammit, I've got wisdom, too. I can rub my knee with hard-earned experience and tell anybody within earshot, "S'gonna rain, you watch." I can proclaim with equanimity and first-hand knowledge, "Nixon had some good qualities." I can add cryptically, after any youngun's long rant about the state of the world, "I seen it all before." Geez, come to think of it, I can now fart loudly, if not totally proudly--yet--in public, knowing that the only response will be, "Oh, it's just OWG, they can do that, don't mind him." God, this is going to be fun.

I can now fully take ownership of that phrase that's been creeping into my speech more and more lately--"When I was a kid." Time was, when I was a kid and some OWG said, "When I was a kid," all I could see in my mind was a grainy black and white photo of boys in knickers selling afternoon papers with the headline "Japs Surrender" for a penny from a wooden cart. What do these goddamn kids today see when this OWG cranks up the "when I was a kid" wax cylinder of his voice? Day-glo pictures of bell-bottomed freaks protesting against the man? I'll take it over what those goddamned kids twenty, thirty years hence will picture when they're enduring their OWG's reminiscences--goateed, dorky glasses-wearing tenth-generation hipsters watching YouTube videos of their cohorts planking.

Of course, I should have seen all of this coming. A couple weeks ago, a very nice young co-worker, in all sincerity, asked me how I dealt with the Vietnam draft. Seems like I remember playing with my beloved Talking GI Joe Doll (God, what that must be worth on eBay these days), as I was all of nine years old when the U.S. ended its involvement in "Indochina." OWG, indeed.

I should have seen it coming when, just minutes before encountering my boss's I'm-old-but-you're-older-guy smile, I heard the news that the band R.E.M. have called it quits. I was the perfect age, 19, when R.E.M. burst on the scene, so I duly swooned. I literally watched them grow from bar band (Peabody's Down Under, summer '83, with the Replacements opening--the two bands that made up 75% of my listening pleasure circa '83-'87) to arena rockers. I own the picture sleeve early 45s and 12"s. When people--goddamned kids, all of them--at work snidely reacted with, "I didn't know they were still together"--I countered, "I did. I own all their albums, including their last one, released a few months ago" ("there's a couple of good tracks on it, really"--the sadly too-often-used opinion I've been defending the REMsters--as Neil Young called them back when they were just goddamned kids--for years now). Why? Because I am what I am, OWG. So, REMsters, join me in embracing our new status, OWGs. Fart proudly Bill, Peter, Mike, and Michael, and thanks for all the great music and concerts you provided me over the years, all the way back to when I was a kid. And sir customer, whoever you are, stop by and look up this OWG and I'll make you a couple killer R.E.M. mixes.

Now excuse me, it's getting late and I must go trim my white nose hairs.