I’m a little apprehensive about 2006. It’s not just the usual — things like what horrors will the Bush administration stick to us this year? or How far with the Supreme Court lurch with Alito? — no, my worries are more along the lines of Will I find a job I like? or Will my life be over when I turn 40?
Yes, I’ve been thinking about this lately. As I watch “The Glass Bottom Boat” with Doris Day today, a film made in 1966, I am amused by the push-button kitchen of the future that never materialized (although, there is the Tassimo machine with a big button on the front). Is this the world we all expected? Is it just the same old thing repeated — I mean, Vietnam?
Anyway, 40. This is scaring me far more than it should. It all comes down to how you look at things, I suppose. There are plenty of people who would look at my current life situation as a dream come true — throwing off the shackles of a former, stagnant life and moving far away, buying a little house that’s far too expensive and taking a sabbatical living off savings. My mind doesn’t work that way, letting me enjoy like that. No, in my mind I’ve given up a stable life for a lonely existence away from everyone and everything I know, in debt to the tune of a half million dollars with no stable income. See? All in the translation, really.
I feel, well, not old, but out of place. As I drive down the road and see places that have on their sign “established 1987,” I think to myself that I graduated from high school in 1985. I’ve been watching “I Love the 80s” on VH1 and have been struck by the realization that I know everything being presenting in the show, but have no clue who the people are commenting — they’re all current celebs. I am vested in Social Security now. My mother recently moved and discovered among the boxes a little clay thing that I made for her in 1st grade or something, an artifact that has now outlasted most electronic devices. Lyndon Johnson was president when I was born. There were 190,000 US troops in Vietnam. That was the year that John Lennon claimed that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Buster Keaton and Walt Disney died. The Vatican announced that they were dropping their list of banned books.
Things being what they are, perhaps the Vatican will revisit that decision 40 years later.
It could be worse. I could have been born in 1906. This year will be the 100th anniversary of the devastating San Francisco earthquake.
Other people who will be 40 this year: Rick Astley, Cindy Crawford, Billy Zane, Janet Jackson, John Cusak, Matthew Fox, Halle Berry, Keifer Sutherland, Adam Sandler, David Schwimmer. Strange… I feel younger than all those people.
