Reflections On Middle Age

So much has happened, so many years.

Back then, as college students, we wanted to learn everything we could about life. The whole world was our oyster (except, of course, for the months with an “R” in them). The book of life, with its large, obscure and heavily-tooled faux leather cover, was still closed to us. We wanted it to open to a spot somewhere in the middle, but were afraid, to an extent, that the binding was so new and would crack loudly, betraying our naiveté to any secondhand book dealers within earshot. So we left it closed, perhaps to open another day. We wanted to embrace who we were, who we were to become, and who we used to be. We especially wanted to get laid, big time.

But I digress. Life’s fragrant bouquet tickled our noses as we tried to splash our palates with its intoxications without drenching our uvulas, like little punching bags left out in the pouring rain.

We followed the teaching of the Zen philosopher Basha, who had so memorably told us that a flute without a hole is not a flute, and a doughnut without a hole, is a Danish. Our holeless flutes cried out in such a pitiable way for more. Quaff deep, we cried, of the cup of love.

Now, of course, we look back. We had been given so much, and what did we do with it? How had we slaked our hungers for knowledge and experience? Had we not only dipped our wicks, but had we lit our candles and even procreated to pass our legacy on to others?

We would be different. Or so we thought. We would not become mindless drones, flailing away in the bowels of a soulless system which consumed young men for breakfast and belched loudly. We rotated our tires. We did what we were supposed to do, mostly, and followed the rules. But we remained a group, a hive mind, honoring throughout the timeless precepts and teachings of our fraternity. And now, projecting ourselves into the future and taking a long look back, what can the men who gathered so memorably last month say about their experiences? Well, let’s see…

· Some never married. Some married only once. Some married more than once. Some are awaiting first dates.
· Some had children. Some had children who had children. Some had no children. None gave birth personally(1).
· Some had one job for thirty years. Some had fifteen jobs in thirty years. Some are still looking…
· Some studied further after college. Some didn’t study but got degrees anyway.
· Smoking seems to have passed into obscurity, giving the lie to the timeless adage, “Many men smoke, but few men chew.”
· Beer is still food(2).
· None decided to change his gender, despite significant advances in technology.
· Some still had their pledge books, hardly adulterated, to serve as a significant source of embarrassment to others (3).
· Those who had tummy tucks had the decency not to brag about it.
· Golf has now become a dangerous contact sport.
· None of us became an obvious wine snob, to the great relief of everyone else. Great nose, and none of the cloying sweetness one would ordinarily expect from a fine Beaujolais.
· None of us became president of the United States (4).
· Some changed religions, but no one proselytized. Hallelujah!
· None still owned the cars they drove in college, despite self-evident advantages in average depreciation expense (5).
· The secrets of the fraternity are safe with us (6).
Collectively, we appeared at the gathering at Dave and Buster’s as a robust, convivial gathering of fraternal rabble, brought together by the bonds of our precepts, paradoxically at once extrinsic and redundant, with a slowly dawning realization that at some point or another there was a really good chance that the old fart sitting next to you tonight just might have seen you naked in a rectangular building constructed of cinder blocks (which was actually not a correctional facility) where you tried your best to be nonchalant in face of a really indescribably artificial environment likened, perhaps most aptly, to daily existence in an underwater vessel where demonstrable emotionality is a raisin d’etre of the first hors d’oeuvre.

So….what gives?

It ill-behooves one who has supped at life’s table to send it back to the kitchen. On balance, life might have treated all of us much, much worse than it did – wouldn’t you say? While fair to say that our present state does not precisely match how we envisioned our future selves in the 1970s, it must be borne in mind that few of us had the faintest clue to what we would be like in 2005 (7).

Except that most of us really wanted to get laid, and some unknowable number of us actually did.

Life is good.

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(1) Well, at least so far as is known…
(2) Almost the whole contingent of B, S & C were there…just one key absence!
(3) The good that men does lives after them; the mischief is remembered forever.
(4) Although Greg Brown did give a very convincing rendering of William Howard Taft.
(5) Two-tone paint seems to have passed into obscurity.
(6) Hell, if one cannot remember where one’s car keys are, why should the secrets of the fraternity be at risk, h’mmm?
(7) Let’s face it – most of us thought that by now we would have already personally experienced the special visual effects at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And that was, of course, four years ago…